The Ministry of Agriculture of the Dominican Republic develops a project of family agriculture at the national level with the support of the mayors’ offices and other State institutions with the objective of promoting orchards in the communities and guaranteeing different indicators such as training or learning laboratory, food and nutritional security and income generation for those involved.
“This program promotes family agriculture and no matter how small the space is, there is the capacity to produce food. Apart from the educational component, the training of young people, the integration of sectors and neighborhoods into the program has a lot of impact, and especially women,” said Eulalio Ramírez, vice minister of agricultural production and marketing of the Ministry of Agriculture.
According to official data, the Department of agriculture has worked in more than 3,923 orchards in the regions identified as:
- Central Regional
- Regional East
- Regional Southwest
- Regional Northeast
- North Regional
- Regional Northwest
- South Regional
- North Central Regional
“The Ministry of Agriculture, which directs the program, contributes all the production of plants, the technical assistancethe materials and equipment that are required, inputs that are necessary and the same institutions also cooperate jointly”, indicated Ramírez.
In addition, he explained that the Ministry of Agriculture works to leave organized structures for the orchard monitoring.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) considers that the family agriculture It is a key sector to achieve the eradication of hunger and the change towards sustainable agricultural systems in Latin America, the Caribbean and the world.
According to Ramírez, the Ministry of Agriculture has signed agreements with the mayor of the National District (Limber Cruz and Carolina Mejía), with the Santo Domingo Este City Council, Inaipi (National Institute for Comprehensive Care for Early Childhood), the Ministry of Education, with the Ministry of the Interior and Police, among others.
Also, he added that they are working with Supérate. “This garden program It has an extensive training program, of organization forming in the schools, the groups that are going to follow it up, the parents who are friends of the schools, with the students, the community and with the support staff of the schools”.
The program is not only focused on the Metropolitan areabut throughout the national territory. “We are carrying it out in the different regional directorates, we have the orchards division working throughout the national territory, mainly in schools.”
Santo Domingo East
In order to recover the vacant spaces and seek better food in the municipalities of Santo Domingo Este, the authorities are running a program to develop family gardens in that town.
“Within the same plan is to generate the desired impact in the recovery of vacant spaces or unused plots and make them productive,” he explained. Ovelis Morenoin charge of sustainable projects of the City Council.
In an interview with Free DailyMoreno said that tomatoes, molondrón, eggplants, chili peppers, spinach, radishes, celery, vegetables, among others, are produced in the orchards.
“We are developing orchards in the Calero, Cansino, El Almirante sector, among others, where the same community members are the ones who are asking us to intervene in those spaces to recover them and do these wonders that we are doing,” Moreno told Diario Libre.
Said the mayor Manuel Jimenez it seeks that the city can show the benefits that these spaces have.
“We live in a world where everything is very fast, even the food is very fast and the same nutrients are wasted,” he said.
