DONOVAN Stanberry, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands says the agro-forestry industry has great potential to generate revenues for the country and is an ideal stimulator for sustainable rural development.
"Agriculture must now serve as the catalyst for rural development and be the engine for the new thrust for that this new Government has clearly declared publicly," Mr. Stanberry stated.
He was making the keynote address at the opening of a three-day seminar themed 'Private Forestry, A Pathway into the Future', hosted by the Ministry's Forestry Department at the Hilton Kingston Hotel in New Kingston on Tuesday.
Mr. Stanberry implored the attendees, which included more than 80 forestry interests from across the Caribbean and North America, to make a concerted effort to arrest the regional rates of deforestation. He also encouraged the audience, to team with their respective forestry departments to maximise the profit potential of forest cover.
CRUCIAL ROLE
Mr. Stanberry argued that while governments provided legislative framework for natural resource management, the onus was not entirely on them. "The people who must do the real work is the private sector. We have to reinvent the concept of the private sector within agriculture to include more than subsistence farmers," he said.
He pointed out that the private sector, which owned two-thirds of designated forestry lands on the island, had a crucial role to play in the process.
In emphasising the importance of the forestry sector to national economic advancement, Mr. Stanberry said all the entities in the ministry were "operating in a new paradigm that appropriates forestry as a major contributor to the economy." He assured that the ministry was prepared to supply interested farmers with fruit tree seedlings for planting on their own lands.
He emphasised that Government had a vested interest in the environment and that such initiatives would underscore the efforts of the Forestry Department. Those attending the seminar include forestry-oriented private sector representatives from Jamaica, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago and Puerto Rico.
