Abstract
There is a worldwide issue in emerging economies with food security and increasing dependence on imported food from more developed countries. St. Kitts-Nevis and numerous Caribbean countries face similar circumstances. St. Kitts-Nevis is positioned to change this trend in its national economy and contribute to export with its Caribbean partners and perhaps further afield. Climate change, particularly pervasive drought conditions, present serious challenges but also opportunities to mitigate and adapt such adversities and accrue benefits to local farmers and related entrepreneurs if a model integrated farm is established with key contributing factors in its design such as productivity, flexibility, efficiency, and sustainability. An integrated farming system would compensate for low economies of scale in a value chain model, and linkages would sustain long-term stability and growth at the enterprise, sectoral, and inter-sectoral levels.
TopThe Diversified Integrated Farm Model (Difm): Nature, Trends, And Characteristics
Howard-Hassmann (2015, in The Human Rights Quarterly) investigates the right to food in Venezuela for the period 1999 to 2013. She found that the state failed to protect this fundamental right. The state-run stores endured that food was sold cheaply and imposed price controls but the food supply was reduced and became extremely severe. Baptiste and Nordenstam (2017) relate the perceptions and action of villagers in the wetlands of rural Trinidad where drilling for oil and gas occurred. They show, contrary to general perception of mainstream researchers on environmental ethics in more developed economies, that villagers in rural wetland communities place high value and respond appropriately to the extent that they are capable with concern for the environment. They found that those whose livelihoods depended on the wetlands were more likely than others to perceive oil and gas drilling as dangerous to the environment and their livelihoods. They asserted that environmental concern was traditionally considered among the highly educated and wealthy people in most affluent countries. Their investigation referred to the finding of scholars who found that people residing in LDCs also have high levels of perception of environmental problems and express concern for the environment.
Blazy, et al (2017), investigating farm diversity with prototyping as useful for designing alternative crop management systems (CMS). They view prototyping methods inadequate to take into account farm diversity in terms of economic, social, and natural constraints. Instead, they propose a two-step methodological framework. Looking at Banana Crop Management systems in Guadeloupe (French Caribbean), the first step is designing a farm typology based on their technical nature, context, and performance, and the second step is prototyping different modalities of intercropping, patterns of pesticide use, choices of hybrid cultivars, and rotations with cover or cash crops. They made the justification for new decision rules for pest control by replacing systematic pest control treatments with new biological components to realize better performances.