KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent (AP) - Delegates from farmers to legislators are meeting in St. Vincent starting Tuesday to discuss ways of boosting the struggling Caribbean banana industry and selling more to Europe.
The three-day meeting is to be attended by officials from Grenada, Barbados, St. Lucia, Martinique and St. Vincent, and focus on revitalizing a banana industry in decline, said Renwick Rose, coordinator of the Windward Islands Farmers Association.The islands plan to discuss aggressively marketing to a recently expanded European Union, Rose said.
The islands, whose small farms struggle to compete against big plantations in Central and South America, face an uphill battle as European countries are phasing out preferential trade quotas for Caribbean bananas by 2006 to comply with a World Trade Organization ruling.
The Windward Islands' banana industry also has suffered from a lack of production and, thus exports, Rose said.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines the number of farmers has slid from more than 12,000 to about 3,500, officials say.
"This forum comes at a critical time when the industry is facing many challenges, not least among them falling fruit prices,'' Rose said.
More than 100 delegates were expected to attend the conference, including representatives from banana companies and organizations from the Windward Islands, Jamaica, and Suriname; representatives from French producers in Martinique and Guadeloupe; and representatives from the European Union and European supermarkets.
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