Agriculture the focus of UWI National Distinguished Lecture

Dr. Govind Seepersad, Lecturer of Agricultural Economics at UWI St. Augustine, will deliver the Eleventh Annual National Bank of Dominica Ltd. & UWI Open Campus Dominica National Distinguished Lecture.

The Lecture takes place on Thursday, May 23, 2019 commencing at 7:00 p.m. at the UWI Auditorium.

Dr. Seepersad will speak on the topic: “Bridging the Exhaustion Gap: Hope & Reality for Agriculture.”

The presentation will focus on the need to re-evaluate the Caribbean agricultural production models.

The UWI says today’s production systems are still too heavily based on old techniques and agricultural education. In contrast, modern agricultural technology in other parts of the world has moved ahead into procedures such as market intelligence, precision practices and reformulated field layout to minimize costs and optimize production.

According to the UWI, decisions concerning resilience to climate change and disease are vital for food security and health of the region’s people. Thus, the Caribbean agriculture’s future depends on us making the right decisions now as our production system has to be designed and formulated for the next 20 years of production and beyond to meet a market demand that has not yet developed.

Dr. Seepersad is from Trinidad and Tobago. Over the past 25 years, he has worked on a number of projects which focus on value chain assessments as well as market and supply analyses of fresh produce markets, both in the region and internationally.