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(IICA ECS) – The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), through its representation in the Eastern Caribbean, in collaboration with the Digitalization of Agrifood Systems Program and its Caribbean Community Resilience Agriculture Forum (CCRAF), successfully hosted the CCRAF 2025 Special Edition Regional Webinar #2 on Wednesday, September 10, 2025.
The highly anticipated virtual session, themed “Digitising ECS Agriculture – Technological Innovations for Agricultural Transformation,” attracted 226 participants from across the region and beyond on the CCRAF’s Zoom platform.
The highlight of the interactive webinar was the presentations from three young Tech-Innovators who showcased cutting-edge digital solutions for common challenges affecting efficiency in farm operations in agrifood systems.
Michael Joseph, a Youth Farmer & Drone Operator, in Antigua and Barbuda, delivered the first presentation on his use of drones for crop management to improve the efficiency of his farm operations, and to provide similar services to other farmers across the country. Charles Grant, IT Manager at Jollys Pharmacy and Director of Q C Grant Ltd in Dominica presentation focused on the use of Long Range Wide Area Networks Applications (LoRaWAN) to support Decision making in agriculture.
Nicolas Castellan, Industrial Civil Engineer and Founder and CEO of in MIIDO, a tech company based in Chile, delivered a presentation centred on AI Powered Virtual Assistant to Simplify Data Collection in Agriculture, providing an extra-regional experience with wide applicability to the Caribbean setting
In his remarks, Representative for the IICA ECS Delegations, Gregg Rawlins, highlighted the significance of the initiative, recognizing that “the agricultural sector in the Caribbean region needs to address the issues of low productivity management, as well as low investment levels. And we see digital technology as an essential tool in helping to build and help to transform the sector moving forward in terms of building greater competitiveness and sustainability.”
Technical Specialist at the IICA Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Delegation, Michael Dalton, underscored IICA’s mandate in this area highlighting that “Digitising Agri-food Systems is one of seven programmes that IICA has in fulfillment of our mandate to really transform agricultural rural communities across our member countries. This is a recognition really of the importance of these types of technologies in improving agricultural productivity.”
From the CCRAF’s perspective (a regional multi-stakeholder platform dedicated to advancing resilient agriculture in the Caribbean by promoting innovation, fostering partnerships, and driving practical solutions from policy to the farm level), Technical Specialist in Water and Soil Management and Coordinator of the CCRAF, Nekelia Carai, emphasized the need to enhance the translation of knowledge into tangible results. “Very important for us outside of all the talk, all the webinars, all the panel discussions,” she said, “is translating that knowledge to action on the ground. And that is why we would have launched the CCRAF on the ROAD initiative where we are now heading into the countries on the ground and implementing a lot of the required actions to address some of the challenges that we’re experiencing in the region.”
Frederico Bert, Program Manager for the Digitalization of Agrifood Systems Program at IICA headquarters, also delivered remarks at the event pointing to program priorities and the importance of promoting the use of such tools as part of efforts to transform agricultural systems. He highlighted IICA’s hosting of Digital Agriculture Day September 22-26 as one of the major events for the program for 2025, which purpose is to build networks with key actors in the country’s/regional digital ecosystems and generate insights to develop diagnostics and recommendations for the country/region.
This regional webinar followed a vibrant series of Digital Agriculture Days organised by IICA delegations across the Eastern Caribbean between June and August 2025:
The September 10 webinar, which brought together these national activities, was the highlightof the IICA ECS Delegations celebration in support of IICA’s Digital Agriculture Week 2025 scheduled for September 22 – 25 in San Jose, Costa Rica. The series represent a reaffirmation of IICA’s commitment to advancing digital innovation as a cornerstone for agricultural transformation, competitiveness, and food and nutrition security across the Region.
Photos: Participants of Webinar
(IICA ECS) – The Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), through its representation in the Eastern Caribbean, in collaboration with the Digitalization of Agrifood Systems Program and its Caribbean Community Resilience Agriculture Forum (CCRAF), successfully hosted the CCRAF 2025 Special Edition Regional Webinar #2 on Wednesday, September 10, 2025.
The highly anticipated virtual session, themed “Digitising ECS Agriculture – Technological Innovations for Agricultural Transformation,” attracted 226 participants from across the region and beyond on the CCRAF’s Zoom platform.
The highlight of the interactive webinar was the presentations from three young Tech-Innovators who showcased cutting-edge digital solutions for common challenges affecting efficiency in farm operations in agrifood systems.
Michael Joseph, a Youth Farmer & Drone Operator, in Antigua and Barbuda, delivered the first presentation on his use of drones for crop management to improve the efficiency of his farm operations, and to provide similar services to other farmers across the country. Charles Grant, IT Manager at Jollys Pharmacy and Director of Q C Grant Ltd in Dominica presentation focused on the use of Long Range Wide Area Networks Applications (LoRaWAN) to support Decision making in agriculture.
Nicolas Castellan, Industrial Civil Engineer and Founder and CEO of in MIIDO, a tech company based in Chile, delivered a presentation centred on AI Powered Virtual Assistant to Simplify Data Collection in Agriculture, providing an extra-regional experience with wide applicability to the Caribbean setting
In his remarks, Representative for the IICA ECS Delegations, Gregg Rawlins, highlighted the significance of the initiative, recognizing that “the agricultural sector in the Caribbean region needs to address the issues of low productivity management, as well as low investment levels. And we see digital technology as an essential tool in helping to build and help to transform the sector moving forward in terms of building greater competitiveness and sustainability.”
Technical Specialist at the IICA Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Delegation, Michael Dalton, underscored IICA’s mandate in this area highlighting that “Digitising Agri-food Systems is one of seven programmes that IICA has in fulfillment of our mandate to really transform agricultural rural communities across our member countries. This is a recognition really of the importance of these types of technologies in improving agricultural productivity.”
From the CCRAF’s perspective (a regional multi-stakeholder platform dedicated to advancing resilient agriculture in the Caribbean by promoting innovation, fostering partnerships, and driving practical solutions from policy to the farm level), Technical Specialist in Water and Soil Management and Coordinator of the CCRAF, Nekelia Carai, emphasized the need to enhance the translation of knowledge into tangible results. “Very important for us outside of all the talk, all the webinars, all the panel discussions,” she said, “is translating that knowledge to action on the ground. And that is why we would have launched the CCRAF on the ROAD initiative where we are now heading into the countries on the ground and implementing a lot of the required actions to address some of the challenges that we’re experiencing in the region.”
Frederico Bert, Program Manager for the Digitalization of Agrifood Systems Program at IICA headquarters, also delivered remarks at the event pointing to program priorities and the importance of promoting the use of such tools as part of efforts to transform agricultural systems. He highlighted IICA’s hosting of Digital Agriculture Day September 22-26 as one of the major events for the program for 2025, which purpose is to build networks with key actors in the country’s/regional digital ecosystems and generate insights to develop diagnostics and recommendations for the country/region.
This regional webinar followed a vibrant series of Digital Agriculture Days organised by IICA delegations across the Eastern Caribbean between June and August 2025:
The September 10 webinar, which brought together these national activities, was the highlightof the IICA ECS Delegations celebration in support of IICA’s Digital Agriculture Week 2025 scheduled for September 22 – 25 in San Jose, Costa Rica. The series represent a reaffirmation of IICA’s commitment to advancing digital innovation as a cornerstone for agricultural transformation, competitiveness, and food and nutrition security across the Region.
Photos: Participants of Webinar
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It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.
The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making
The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy.
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