A pilot programme to protect crops from being pilfered at night is under review, MPs heard yesterday.

Walter Roban, the home affairs minister, said that theft from fields continued to hit farmers and cameras had been handed out to keep watch with the aim of prosecuting people stealing crops under cover of darkness.

Mr Roban also told the House of Assembly that a soil and crop management expert taken on last year by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources would spend two more years examining opportunities to boost the island’s agriculture.

The agronomist, hired last May, is to be followed on the job by a full-time Bermudian trainee to be hired in the next few weeks, who is expected to take over the role.

The consultant agronomist is conducting the first study in more than 50 years of the island’s plant nematodes — a microscopic worm with both beneficial and detrimental effects on crops, golf courses and banana patches.

Mr Roban said the agronomist had linked Bermuda’s farmers with resources from overseas, including training in the safe use of pesticides.

DENR is also reviewing its embargoes of restricted agricultural imports.

The House heard that clean shipments of seed potatoes and strawberry plants were secured last year — with the agricultural consultant also researching biologically safe imports to boost local fruit production.

Mr Roban added that DENR would research opportunities for biological control of insect crop pests over the next year, using overseas agricultural expertise, to cut down on the use of chemical pesticides.

A high-tech audit of Bermuda’s arable land is to be completed over the next two months.

The work is part of an integrated agriculture strategy implemented one year ago, at a “pivotal moment” in the island’s history with arable land in decline, business costs escalating and increasing pressure anticipated from climate change.