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April 2016
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The aim of the competition is twofold – to promote and strengthen secondary education in Agriscience and forge links with secondary and university programmes at the Faculty of Food and Agriculture. The Faculty – which comprises the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, Department of Food Production, Department of Geography and the Business Development Unit – offers a range of programmes at the certificate, undergraduate and postgraduate level. The hope is that the competition will encourage more young Trinbagonians to pursue the Faculty’s programmes. The ADOPT Project looks at improving the sustainability of the Protected Agriculture Industry through increasing the contribution of protected agriculture produce to food security goals. One of its goals is to implement non-traditional systems for small-scale farming, aimed at strengthening local food security and adapting traditional open field farming methods in the face of variations in climate. The project blends Protected Agriculture shade house technology with a combination of alternative agricultural methods like hydroponics, organoponics, hybridponics, aquaponics, peeponics, aeroponics, vermiponics and barrel-ponics growing systems and LED light technology for sustainable food production using low-cost or recyclable materials. There are 3 phases in the competition: In Phase I, interested schools will send their letter of interest and proposal of their innovative ideas to address food security using the competition guidelines. Fifty schools will then be short-listed as part of Phase II and asked to submit drawings of their design and a budget. Finally, Phase III will see ten schools further short-listed and asked to build a table-top prototype of their proposed design. Student-teams in Forms 2 to 5 are invited to participate in the competition which runs till June 2016. Interested schools can contact the Department of Food Production via email at food.production@sta.uwi.edu, adopt.uwirdi.project@gmail.com or call 662-2002 ext. 82090 or 84055 for further information. |
The Faculty of Food and Agriculture at The UWI St. Augustine in partnership with Repsol recently launched its first Agricultural Innovation competition for secondary schools throughout Trinidad and Tobago. The competition is part of the Agriculture Demonstration of Practices and Technologies (ADOPT) Project, funded by The UWI-Trinidad and Tobago Research and Development Impact (RDI) Fund. The project encourages the development of innovative technologies to address agricultural challenges within food systems. The formal launch took place on February 23 at the St. Augustine Campus.