NIA CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (July 28, 2020) — Mr. Randy Elliott, Director of the Department of Agriculture on Nevis, is welcoming the fleet of vehicles handed over to the Department and Ministry of Agriculture recently at the Prospect Experimental Station, stating that they have increased the department’s ability in greater measure to serve farmers.

The four vehicles, all four-wheel drive vehicles, were officially handed over to the department recently by Hon. Alexis Jeffers, Deputy Premier of Nevis and Minister of Agriculture, though they had been received before and were already in service.

“The vehicles will only add to the efficiency here at the Department of Agriculture. For those who would have known the department, there are times you have one vehicle sharing between four and five officers, and these vehicles are now being used to service our farmers in a shorter time span.

“Some of these said vehicles were used to assist our farmers as it relates to taking seedlings, taking pesticides, taking down to staking posts to farmers during the COVID. It is not just an addition of vehicles for the sake of vehicles but they are vehicles to improve the efficiency here at the Department of Agriculture,” he said.

Mr. Elliott noted that the new vehicles were given to the department at the right time to help to carry out the Nevis Island Administration’s mandate of increasing food production in the agricultural sector on Nevis.

He also expressed the view that the vehicles would also help to change the public’s opinion of agriculture.

“It basically changes the perception that persons have of agriculture also because over the years one would have seen the department fighting with old vehicles… It shows that there is a new thrust. There is a new way that the NIA is looking at the sector,” he said.