Grenada agriculture industry rebounding after Huricane Ivan

The second anniversary of Hurricane Ivan’s impact on Grenada has come and gone, there has been some success in reviving the nutmeg industry but a major problem faces the recovery of the industry.

Hurricane Ivan destroyed the Spice Isle’s nutmeg industry on September 7, 2004 triggering a worldwide increase in the price of the spice. Grenada was a major supplier.{{more}}

Two years later, the industry has had minimal success with using grafts to compensate for lack of seedlings as they try to rebuild that industry, Reginald Andall of the Grenada office of the Caribbean Agriculture Research and Development Institute’s (CARDI) told the Searchlight. A nutmeg tree takes seven years to bear fruit.

However he said that the major problem facing the recovery is inadequate labour and that remains a grave concern.

“There have been requests for outside labour to help the situation and it has begun to attract workers from Guyana,” he said.

The cocoa industry was doing well and the golden apple sector made a swift rebound while vegetable production was back “in a big way”.

There have been huge financial inputs from aid agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and USAID.