FORMER DIRECTOR GENERAL of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Dr Chelston Brathwaite, recently joined the St Augustine Campus of the University of the West Indies as interim director of the School of Agriculture.
In this new capacity, Brathwaite will assist the university in defining a new role for the school in supporting agricultural development in the Caribbean.
He has identified this role as providing training, research and extension activities to promote a competitive agricultural sector and support food security initiatives that help the countries of the region respond to climate change and the loss of the preferential markets.
Brathwaite says the university, through its research and training programmes in agribusiness and agro-industry, can help those countries achieve a reasonable level of food security.
He also indicated that the continued use of agricultural products for biofuels, the high cost of food and transport in the international markets, population growth and urbanization in the developing world would continue to reduce available food supplies.
They will also make it urgent for Caribbean countries to invest in the food and agriculture sector, he argues.
Brathwaite was Student Of The Year on the St Augustine Campus in 1965 and an honours graduate of the Bachelor of Science agriculture programme in 1966. He subsequently earned the Master of Science degree in plant pathology in 1968 and his doctorate in 1970 from Cornell University in the United States of America.
Brathwaite has wide international experience, having worked in the United States, Jamaica, Italy, Kenya, Costa Rica and Mexico.
He managed IICA, the agricultural agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), from 2002 to January, 2010.
Brathwaite was the first director general of the 67-year-old Institute from the English-speaking Caribbean.He is now director emeritus of IICA.
