Ministry of Agriculture Focuses on Pitahya, Soursop, Coconut, and Onion Production

Recent weeks have seen the Ministry of Agriculture working with various local small farmers in the production of pitahya, soursop, coconut and onions.  Trainings on identifying and producing various grafted versions of some fruits have been the focus of the ministry.  Last week, training sessions continued in Yo Creek.  Minister of Agriculture, Abelardo Mai, explained that the sessions and focus on these fruits are done via an agreement with Mexican counterparts.

Jose Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture: “So we decided to, based on market led approach, profit driven, identified commodities we wanted to work on one of them was coconut, second was Pitahya, third was Soursop. These three products are the ones we gave a lot of emphasis. So we signed agreements with the Mexican government for technical cooperation in these commodities. They have good expertise in Pitahya, they have coconuts, they also have Soursop but we also received assistance from the FAO for Soursop. We brought in two or three times an expert from Brazil to train our farmers how to grow Soursop. Soursop is a bit challenging at times, you can’t get the fruit the correct size before it gets infected with something and you don’t have a good source of crop. So we are learning that process.”