EDITORIAL: Towards better food security

WE recently received reports that those who are participating in a certain aspect of Government’s Farmers’ Empowerment and Enfranchisement (FEED) Programme, are steps closer to putting their expertise and new agribusinesses to work.

The fifteen participants of the programme’s agroforestry course recently received their starter kits, comprising of boots, overalls, chemical gloves and garden gloves; and they also received 70 fruit trees, inclusive of soursop, gooseberry and golden apple trees; as well as an allocated three acres of land and accompanying technical support for the project. It has been noted that these recipients were the first of the programme’s 100 participants to be given their kits, as well as land. The focus however, it is said, is not only on agroforestry, but on apiculture, aquaponics and greenhouse as well as open field crop production.

Now Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Indar Weir, has been quoted as stating that he is pleased with the developments. “You, the participants, can now move on to the next phase where you now can start your lives as business people doing agriculture, but at the same time achieving a number of things. One, you will help us with food security and that is for sure; and two, you can help us with the re-vegetation of the Scotland District, which is absolutely critical; and three, if you are in fact successful and committed, then overall you give to us a new cadre of business people in Barbados, that will help us to mitigate climate change by the amount of trees that you are going to be planting,” he said of the initiative.

Now the FEED project that the Ministry has embarked on, specifically this aspect of the programme on which we are focusing, brings into the spotlight the need for more of the above, so we can better work towards our food security. If we consider that we import too much of what we eat and that if we were to be touched by a natural disaster of catastrophic proportions, that a significant portion of our crops, fruit trees, etc. could be lost, we would see the need to really do better in terms of boosting our agricultural sector and its offerings.

Consider an article published in Forbes, by Daphne Ewing-Chow, environmental writer with a focus on food and agriculture, who notes “Five Overlooked Facts about Caribbean Food Security”. Amongst these, she points out that “most Caribbean countries are Net Food Importing Developing Countries – that is, imports are the dominant source of food energy”. Secondly, “in many areas, national food production has declined, most notably in fruits and vegetables and has been replaced with imports”. Thirdly, “lack of local production means that Caribbean people tend to eat more highly processed foods that have a long shelf life”.

This all rings true for Barbados. Certainly, we can do better in the area of the production of fruits and vegetables and we can make a better effort to cut out the processed foods, in favour of what we grow locally. Thus, we need to improve local production of both food crops and livestock, as part of a farm-to-table endeavour.

We surely cannot wait a few more years to think about how we will become better food secure. Even though we may be a little late in terms of putting the right policies in place to encourage more persons to make their way into the agricultural sector, from what we are seeing, we are now headed in the right direction. So let us truly give some thought to the whole matter of our food security, in a bigger and better way.

Barbados Advocate

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