Niocka Abbott, a Langley Park farmer last week returned home from Costa Rica where she represented WINFA at a Latin American Regional Seminar in preparation for an International Banana Conference to be held in Brussels in May of next year.{{more}}

Abbott, a member of the board of directors of the local Banana Association as well as secretary of the National Fair Trade Committee, expressed satisfaction with the level of discussion on topics such as the European Union’s proposals to change its banana import arrangements, the position of trade unions and workers in the international banana trade and the environmental impact of banana production.

In particular she said that increasingly a convergence of views between the Caribbean and many Latin American countries in the EU banana proposal is developing.

A follow-up Caribbean Seminar, is to be hosted in St. Vincent by WINFA in January.

Meanwhile, WINFA Coordinator Renwick Rose and farmer President Wilberforce Emanuel, returned from workshops held in Trinidad. The Trinidad meetings dealt with the experience of Grenada and disaster preparedness as well as civil society input into major trade negotiation (EU-ACP, Free Trade Area of the Americas, WTO and the Caribbean Single market and Economy).