Save agricultural land for agriculture

Agricultural land in this island must only be used for this purpose and nothing else.

This is according to the Chief Agricultural Officer at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and Water Resource Management, Lennox Chandler, who spoke with the Barbados Advocate recently.

Chandler stated that across the globe agriculture has often been put on the backburner when it comes to development as people tend to see the construction of both commercial and residential developments as a priority but, while this is certainly important, there has to be a cut-off point where people do not end up taking away land that is meant for agriculture to be used for construction and other purposes.

“Agriculture has always given way to other forms of development, whether it be residential, commercial buildings, whatever, agriculture has given way. But I mean there must be a cut-off point. A decision has to be made that we are going to keep whatever quantity of land. People like to talk about technology and if we have technology, then we don’t need this much land … But there is only so much technology can do. You still have to have that core, that critical acreage that you can’t go below, that if you fall below that, then you would find yourselves in problems.”

The Chief Agricultural Officer stated that this thinking might be based on the belief that this country can always import any food that the population needs anyway as a result, the country does not need to reserve so much land to grow produce.

However, there are certain factors that persons need to take into consideration when it comes to importing food such as the high food import bill.

“But again, the thinking is based on the fact that you can buy food, but as I said, you can buy food - but you can buy food at very high prices – which would keep the food import bill up. So even though you can access food and you have food security because you can buy it, then you still have the challenge of that high food import bill which you don’t want.”
Another factor that needs to be contemplated is that when food comes from overseas, you may not know exactly how that food was grown.

“And again, you have to have control of what you are buying and what you are eating and how it is grown and stuff like that. You know, around the world, there is actually a food sovereignty movement where people are focusing specifically on food sovereignty and how the food is grown, where it is produced, how it is processed and all that kind of stuff. So for a little country like Barbados, that shouldn’t be too difficult.”