The Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion (FAO) says it will over the com­ing months, con­tin­ue its sup­port to land bank ini­tia­tives across four Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­tries, with ac­tiv­i­ties geared to­wards in­tro­duc­ing, up­grad­ing and train­ing per­son­nel on na­tion­al land banks in­for­ma­tion sys­tems.

The FAO said Grena­da, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines would al­so ben­e­fit from ac­tion plans that will be de­vel­oped with each coun­try, based on the dis­cus­sions of a work­shop held this week to es­tab­lish work­plans for im­proved land bank im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the FAO, land banks as a tool in im­prov­ing ac­cess to lands for agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, have ex­ist­ed for decades in many parts of the world.

It said in the Caribbean, they are slow­ly gain­ing trac­tion as a means of re­dis­trib­ut­ing un­der­uti­lized and idle lands to farm­ers, al­low­ing them to have more se­cure ac­cess to land to im­prove their agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Dur­ing the April 8-9 work­shop, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the FAO through its Re­gion­al Of­fice for Latin Amer­i­ca and its Sub­re­gion­al Of­fice for the Caribbean, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives shared.

“The ses­sions sought to ex­am­ine as­pects of ef­fec­tive agri­cul­tur­al land man­age­ment and ar­eas of im­prov­ing gen­der bal­ance in ac­cess to land, to learn from coun­tries that have de­vel­oped na­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al land banks and to share some best prac­tices and rec­om­men­da­tions to strength­en the im­ple­men­ta­tion of agri­cul­tur­al land banks in the re­gion,” the FAO said.

FAO’s  Land Tenure Of­fi­cer, Am­paro Cer­ra­to Gevaw­er,  high­light­ed the role of land banks in pro­mot­ing the in­clu­sion of mar­gin­al­ized groups in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, es­pe­cial­ly young peo­ple and women.

She said that en­sur­ing in­clu­sive land ac­cess can help in ad­vanc­ing the achieve­ment of na­tion­al, re­gion­al and glob­al agen­das, like the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs), and in pro­mot­ing a sus­tain­able and re­silient re­gion­al food fu­ture.

The FAO said at the end of the work­shop, the coun­tries agreed on sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions and con­di­tions that would lead to the suc­cess of land banks.

“These in­clude the need for land bank ini­tia­tives to be coun­try-dri­ven, en­sur­ing gov­ern­ment buy-in and com­mit­ment from pol­i­cy­mak­ers, ap­proach­ing land banks as a flex­i­ble mech­a­nism- adapt­able to the pri­or­i­ties and needs of coun­tries in pro­mot­ing agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, and en­sur­ing that land ad­min­is­tra­tion of pub­lic lands was well man­aged to en­cour­age buy-in by pri­vate landown­ers. “

Cer­ra­to re­it­er­at­ed the FAO’s sup­port in de­vel­op­ing pro­pos­als and part­ner­ing with oth­er projects and ini­tia­tives to sup­port land bank im­ple­men­ta­tion in the re­gion. She said that strength­en­ing land banks re­quired sup­port from oth­er ar­eas, such as train­ing in good agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices, ca­pac­i­ty build­ing of tech­ni­cal of­fi­cers, val­ue chain de­vel­op­ment, busi­ness mod­el de­vel­op­ment and in­creas­ing ac­cess to mar­kets.

She said that land banks are not a ‘sil­ver bul­let’ to solv­ing food in­se­cu­ri­ty and prob­lems faced by farm­ers but are a use­ful pol­i­cy tool in help­ing to build re­silience to shocks, threats and risks faced by farm­ers.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, Apr 11, CMC

CMC/ad/ir/2025