By: Staff Writer
August 15, 2023
A Barbadian entrepreneur is launching a “dynamic approach” to agriculture with new 1,000 acre initiative set to launch within the next few months.
The 1,000 acre initiative seeks to build awareness around inventive ways towards agricultural development and using new methods to spur creativity in the sector.
Joshua Forte, founder and CEO of Red Diamond, an agri-tech company in Barbados, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that he is doing a number of things for this upcoming Fall and it involves the use of 1,000 acres of land that will be educational as well as practical, offering a “dynamic approach to agriculture.”
Mr Forte also said: “In essence, what we are doing at the core of it is really ask: How do we transform 1000 acres of land into regenerative organic production to maximize food and nutrition security and resilience against climate change?”
The region has a deficit in ideas on modern agricultural capacity building for a region desperate to find results to feed its growing population. “one of the big things we’re going to be trying to address with this too, is the ecological deficit of our islands not being able to produce the peak capacity of what’s needed to support the number of citizens that we have,” Mr Forte said.
This 1,000 acre initiative will maximise the soil potential and move away from the “dull and boring,” ways of agriculture and spur more creativity in the sector. “We’re looking at predominantly at the source of production, which is the small farmers and we’ll also be looking at community gardening and so on. And some of the more engaging content will be the Entertainment content, which will be appealing to those groups as well,” Mr Forte said.
The 1,000 acre initiative is not solely for Barbados as it will branch out to other Caribbean islands too. Mr Forte said: “Especially looking at targeting youth in agriculture and women in agriculture as well and those demographics may vary slightly from country to country as we branch out. We are starting to have some of these conversations with some other islands as well and other countries as well. So we’re going to be launching a pilot here in Barbados in a couple of months.”
Mr Forte is no stranger to employing impactful and innovative solutions to Caribbean agriculture as he is a pioneer in the sargassum to fertilizer programme in Barbados through his company Red Diamond Compost.
Looking for a “data driven” approach to agricultural development in this pioneering 1,000 acre method will be a challenge that will be met and there will be tracking of the initiative’s success in real time. “We’re not going to be talking, but monitoring the results.”
Mr Forte also said: “So we’re looking at 1,000 acres here in Barbados, and in each island, we would want to ultimately have that 1,000 acres challenge to be conquered but then we’re going to be branching out to bigger territories and so on.”
The One Young World Summit will be held in Belfast, Ireland this October 2-5 and Mr Forte will be heading over to build support for his initiative and “bring more partners on board,” as he champions the cause for Caribbean farmer and the solution to the climate crisis impacting food production.