Caribbean Community member countries (CARICOM) are looking for ways to build on existing initiatives to realize an improvement in their food safety status even collectively, they share a food import bill believed to be in the vicinity approximately US $ 5 billion at this time.
Last week the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) unveiled a new project aimed at improving food security and agricultural productivity by improving the production, processing and marketing of sweet potatoes in the region.
The CDB is supporting the initiative with a US $ 600,000 grant to the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Foundation (CARDI) to fund the research and capacity building initiative. CARDI itself provides match funding for a project, and its overall cost is estimated at US $ 810,000.