Agriculture is growing despite facing some challenges.
Minister of Agriculture, Food and Nutritional Security Indar Weir said the evidence of this was in the Central Bank’s third quarter economic review, as he assured Barbadians there would be adequate supplies of ham, pork, poultry including chicken, and eggs this Christmas.
He was responding to statements from Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne, who said agriculture was in decline.
They were speaking in the House of Assembly yesterday during debate on a resolution seeking Parliament’s approval for Barbados to borrow $313.6 million from China SINOPHARM International Corporation to expand the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Weir chided Thorne and said the Opposition Leader was engaging in “a load of generics” about agriculture when the evidence from the Central Bank was that the sector grew by 10.1 per cent between January and September.
“Agriculture output, as it relates to livestock, in the third quarter was also up seven per cent and I bring these numbers to this House because I challenge The Honourable Leader of the Opposition to go to the Central Bank report and read what is reported there,” the minister said.
“Food crops rose 12.3 per cent. So [agricultural] output was 10.1 per cent for the third quarter in 2025. Meat production increased 9.1 per cent, egg output rose 14.5 per cent, pork expanded 3.7 per cent, and chicken production climbed to 2.7 per cent.
“Despite all of the bad weather, flooding, everything, chicken tunnels collapse, climate change made it very difficult for agriculture, and this Minister of Agriculture still got a 10.1 per cent growth [in] three quarters,” Weir added.
The Member of Parliament for St Philip South also assured Barbadians that “Christmas is upon us, [and] we have not heard any waves at all about any shortages of any kind of food”.
“Barbadians consume a lot of ham in this country at Christmas. We now have an abundance of ham and pork available in Barbados. We have chicken, poultry, available in abundance in Barbados [and] table eggs. And these are consistent with the Central Bank report for the third quarter,” Weir said.
He shared that while at this time last year Barbadians were paying $10 a pound for sweet potato, this root crop “is now $1.75 per pound for Barbados to consume”.
“When you hear the Leader of the Opposition speak, you will think that nothing is going on in this country in agriculture. Yet every single day, farmers show up all the time, the same poor people that he wants to talk about, young men and women show up every single day, rain fall, sun shine, to make sure that food is placed on our tables.
The minister said the authorities were “working towards great things like getting into climate-smart agriculture using vertical farms” and that greenhouse technology was being introduced at secondary schools.
There was also an effort to “work towards bringing down the food import bill”.
“There are challenges. You have climate [change], you got unpredictable rainfall, you got droughts, you got pests, you got all kinds of diseases, but we have been able to manage through all of that to bring some stability to the sector,” Weir said.
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