More than 750 peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go were trained across sev­er­al ex­cit­ing themes as the US­AID Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) pro­gramme which was start­ed in April 2020, cel­e­brat­ed the cul­mi­na­tion of the pro­gramme on May 10 – 11.

It took place at The Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies – St. Au­gus­tine (The UWI) com­ing out of a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty, a land grant uni­ver­si­ty in West Lafayette, In­di­ana, re­spon­si­ble for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) pro­gramme.

For the past three years, the Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID) fund­ed the pro­gramme and pro­vid­ed tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance from U.S. vol­un­teers to farm­ers, farm groups, agribusi­ness­es, and oth­er agri­cul­ture sec­tor in­sti­tu­tions in Trinidad & To­ba­go. The clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny in­clud­ed cul­tur­al pre­sen­ta­tions by host groups and lo­cal vol­un­teers who were a part of the pro­gramme.

In her re­marks, U.S. Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, The Ho­n­ourable Mrs. Can­dace A. Bond told par­tic­i­pants that the U.S. Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to help­ing ad­dress food in­se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges in the re­gion. She not­ed that the work be­ing done through the F2F pro­gramme is crit­i­cal to strength­en­ing the food sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go and around the re­gion.