After a long Christmas break, the Bahamas Agriculture and Industrial Corporation’s (BAIC) Pop Up Market went back at its Gladstone Road locations this past Saturday.
Confirming this was BAIC Chairman Michael Foulkes who told reporters that BAIC is looking forward to providing families with high quality fresh Bahamian grown produce.
The BAIC Chairman noted that last year just under 100 farmers were active in the pop up market and proudly stated that 73 per cent of BAIC’s expenses last year were payments made to the farmers.
He added that this number is expected to increase in 2019.
“Every month last year they received a check from BAIC, in total, almost $200,000 in 2018.”
We anticipate that those payments will increase by about $60,000 in 2019. For the most part, those would be direct payments to our Family Island farmers and their families.
“In fact, there is one farmer in Eleuthera to whom we paid almost $45,000 between January 2018 and December 2018.
“Imagine that, and let us not forget there was a time when the Department of Agriculture at most paid each Bahamian farmer a subsidy of $9,000 per annum and that was it,” Mr. Foulkes said.
The BAIC Chairman also confirmed that the pop up market will be in Grand Bahama this month. He further opined that the plan is to pop up in other family islands as well.
“We are looking at doing that this year, as we have had a number of request. We have had a request from Abaco, we have had a request from Long Island and frankly, the one that we get a lot of request for is probably the most difficult to do because of the shipping and the time it takes to get the produce there.
“However, we have had a lot of people calling from Inagua and they really want us to bring some of this wonderful fresh fruits and vegetable there,” said Mr. Foulkes.
“We know the climate isn’t best for growing fruits and vegetable in Inagua, it’s very dry, so we’re going to see how we can accommodate them sometime in 2019.
“We are going to do our best perhaps to do it as a collaborative effort because the cost of shipping to Inagua and also the produce needing to be refrigerated,” he said.
The pop up market hours of operation is from 8am to 3pm every Saturday.
