Frequent extreme weather events are causing global food shortages. To assist our diplomatic partner St. Lucia in strengthening production-distribution supply chains to ensure food security, the International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF) and St. Lucia's Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Physical Planning, Natural Resources and Co-operatives have been collaborating on the "Project for enhancing the efficiency of production-distribution supply chains in fruit and vegetable sector” since 2019. This project aims to increase local agricultural produce sold by farmers to hotels and supermarkets. In addition, the project's development of the new agriculture information system iFarm assists farmers in organizing their production and supply plans, and allows farmers to efficiently produce product tracing labels with QR codes. By integrating information including field production, market price and market volume, iFarm builds linkages between production and market to expand sales channels. This information system is expected to be officially launched in February 2021.

Combining the many years of experience of experts from the Taiwan Technical Mission in St. Lucia, and extensive collection of farmers' information, field yield surveys and market crop prices, iFarm has been built into an integrated agriculture information system with traceability and farmland geographic information features. It provides farmers and the government of St. Lucia with a practical tool comprising five characteristics: sustainability, transparency, convenience, immediacy and communication.

During regular visits, field extension officers and market investigators can upload live production and market data to iFarm. Agricultural units and the public can then obtain the real-time information through the iFarm website and mobile application. Moreover, this system also provides consumers opportunities to contact producers, expanding farmers’ sales channels. If farmers upload their production information on the iFarm website, the product tracing labels can be directly downloaded from the system, attached to packaging materials and then sent to supermarkets and other channels. The development of this system will start a new chapter for the agricultural development of St. Lucia.

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• Update: 2021/01/26
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