EDITORIAL: Self-sufficiency the way to go

IT is no secret that Barbados needs to become more efficient in the area of food production, so that we as a nation can become more self-sufficient.

Given the above acknowledgement, the Rural Development Commission’s (RDC) “Grow What You Eat” Programme should be fully embraced. According to Minister of Housing, Lands and Rural Development, Denis Kellman, such a programme is designed to help the public understand the importance of feeding themselves, with a view also of reducing the island’s high food import bill.

According to the Minister, the RDC has already started to play its role in this process, by offering residents within its boundaries access to various planting materials and receptacles and information through workshops and seminars. Furthermore, RDC officials will also be going into local schools to get young people more interested in growing food.

Now with word coming from Dr. Lystra Fletcher-Paul, Sub-Regional Co-ordinator for the Caribbean at the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), suggesting that Barbadians are literally “eating themselves to death”, given the high levels of overweight and obesity amongst the local population and the high levels of chronic non-communicable diseases severely affecting citizens, the time for us to act is now in getting the message out that healthier eating also is a must. Indeed, she gave some startling statistics, pointing out that according to the World Health Organisation, by the year 2016, 52.6 per cent of persons over 16 years old were overweight in Barbados and 23.1 per cent were obese. Just over half of the adult population of Barbados is overweight and approximately one in five persons is obese, Dr. Fletcher-Paul stated. She also pointed out that more than twice the amount of women are obese, compared to men in Barbados and this is directly related to the food we eat.

Programme vital

This is all the more reason why the RDC’s Grow What You Eat programme is vital at this time, as it would appear that Barbadians need to retrain their taste buds so that they do not crave foreign goods, but return to the foods our forefathers thrived on, even if we as a nation find new ways of cooking and presenting these foods. We also need to see more Barbadians growing more of what they consume, so that we can start to make a dent in our extremely high food import bill. This is not a backward step, but indeed a forward thinking one, given that the country needs to become more self-sufficient.

What we also need to see is more investment in the area of agriculture and in agricultural research, in an effort to reduce the negative effects of climate change on our local food production levels. We also need to investigate how the agricultural sector can produce more locally manufactured products for export.

Indeed, the agricultural sector is a potential catalyst by which we can achieve sustainable economic growth, only if we applied ourselves seriously to improving the sector, rather than simply putting it on the backburner. It is time to explore all the agricultural sector in Barbados has to offer, as we work towards greater self-sufficiency and by extension a healthier nation.