Organisation continues to offer help to local partners

MEMBER countries of CABI are being given the assurance that the not-for-profit science based development and information organisation, will continue to work with local partners to transfer knowledge and skills with the view of building capacity.

That is according to the Chief Executive Officer of CABI, Dr. Trevor Nicholls while addressing those attending a recently held seminar hosted by that organisation.

“Our aim right through all of this, is to improve lives and livelihoods around the world, by applying knowledge to solve problems in both agricultural and environmental situations. We work on behalf now of 48 member countries, a very colourful flag board, that goes all the way from Anguilla here in the Caribbean to Zimbabwe in Africa, but stopping off at many places such as India and China in between,” he said.

Nicholls noted that while they are a small organisation, they have a large global footprint with over 20 locations worldwide and employing hundreds of persons, with the organisation’s work split into two business units – publishing and international development.

Speaking to some of the initiatives they have undertaken particularly as it relates to food security, Nicholls said that they have been working to help farmers to lose less of what they are growing, so that they could feed more people.

“This initiative really has two key strands to it. It has the strand of a global knowledge bank, which is an open access resource providing data for the identification and prevention of pest and disease attacks on groups, but also giving us a way of tracking the global spread of pest and diseases. But that is really a complement to the local expertise of plant clinics on the ground, and CABI runs these plant clinics in partnership with local and national organisations to provide advice that is specific for farmers, and helps them with their crops day to day,” he said.

With that in mind, he said that such clinics and the plant wise programme are already being run here in Barbados. Moreover, he revealed that plant clinics are being run in over 20 member countries and they are in discussions to spread the programme’s reach into other territories. (JRT)