SAN JOSE, Costa Rica – The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) has named Grenadian Sandra Ferguson, as a Leader of Rurality of the Americas.
Sandra FergusonIn a statement, IICA said that she has worked for more than 30 years to advance small farmers in Grenada, by providing them access to credit, technical support and training.
Ferguson will receive the “Soul of Rurality” award, as part of an initiative by the specialized organization in agricultural and rural development, to shine the spotlight on men and women who are leaving their mark and making a difference in the rural Americas, a region that is pivotal to food and nutritional security and the environmental sustainability of the planet.
In 1992, Ferguson joined the Agency for Rural Transformation (ART), a non-governmental organization in Grenada, the Caribbean country which is famous for its nutmeg production, the main reason for its being known as the Spice Island.
ART is an organization that works to empower rural communities to improve their standard of living, with a particular focus on women, youth, family farmers and artisans.
IICA said Ferguson is a spirited advocate for the cultivation of healthy food and local consumption, which is a matter of critical concern throughout the Caribbean, as a region whose food security is largely dependent on imports.
It said she has also played an instrumental role in campaigns such as “Grow What You Eat and Eat What You Grow” and “Eat Local! Eat Healthy!”, whose messages have resonated throughout the country.
“Eating what we grow locally is healthier and our priority is to use food as a means of improving community health. We developed a program to distribute vegetable and fruit seeds, as a means of encouraging households to grow their own food,” Ferguson said.
“Along with this, we introduced training programs on preparing and combining foods to increase their nutritional value. We mainly worked with the mothers in the family and with young people”.
Ferguson has also worked on programmes to provide loans to small-scale businesses, which are often sidelined from the main sources of financing, and has played a key role in revitalizing the Grenadian beekeeping sector, whose honey production has gained international recognition for this Caribbean country.
She also promoted an initiative to support beekeepers through the provision of packaging and other services to boost the efficiency of their businesses.
In 1997, she coordinated Grenada’s participation in the International Honey Show in Great Britain, where the island copped several prestigious awards. IICA’s projects with the country’s Ministry of Agriculture further contributed to the success of Grenadian honey overseas.
The Leader of Rurality of the Americas accolade is granted to individuals who play a unique dual role, as guarantors of food and nutritional security, who also safeguard the planet’s biodiversity, by producing under all manner of circumstances. The award also seeks to highlight these individuals’ capacity to promote positive examples for the region’s rural areas.
“Grenada is famous for its nutmeg production. Before Hurricane Ivan devastated the island in 2004, we were the world’s second largest producer of that spice. Unfortunately, we lost that position. Then, Hurricane Beryl clobbered us again (in 2024)”, recalls Ferguson, who remembers that as a child, her father was a nutmeg and cocoa farmer.
She attended the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of the West Indies (UWI) and later pursued post-graduate studies in Agricultural Development at the UWI campus and at the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands.
“One of the best lessons that has stuck with me for life is that a farmer knows what he or she must do. In principle, you don’t have to bother to teach them but rather you must seek to understand the system in which they operate.
“You must find out about their ambitions, their resources and the surrounding context, in order to work with them. Recognizing this prepared me to function in civil society and then I entered the Agency for Rural Transformation, starting first in the division of economic projects”, she added.
She said that food sovereignty is becoming increasingly important, given the impact of climate change on the Caribbean, triggering more hurricanes, more heat waves, more flooding and more drought.
“We must revisit ancestral practices and indigenous knowledge, many of which are unknown to young people,” she sad, adding “we must work to empower small farmers.
“We cannot give in. They are our source of inspiration in the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas, because we know that without them, we cannot have healthy food,” she added.
