Do Barbadians Care About Agriculture?

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agriculture.jpg
One of the major differences unfolding between the two parties is its agriculture policy. We saw the above poster on the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) website and it rammed home the point for us. The troubling fact for the DLP is that although this is an important issue Barbadians do not give a damn about agriculture. We believe that the advertisement featured above represents a wasted message.
Vote To Protect Our Democracy – BU

18 thoughts on “Do Barbadians Care About Agriculture?”


  2. BU,

    I beg to differ that such an AD is a wasted one.

    The callous nature by which agriculture has been treated by this BLP gov’t …….is what , in view that has given rise to such negative perceptions !

    If this BLP gov’t had not pursued a misguided policy….of selling agricultural lands for housing / golf course / condiminium development…..in essence the BLP policy of allowing land to fetch it’s highest economic value .

    Then agriculture would have flourished in this country.

    Our food import bill and by extension…our cost of living could have been contained.

    But nooooo………now that Cost of Living has caught the BLP gov’t attention 2 months before the 2008…….check out the BLP response :

    ** Owen says…plant food in yuh…BACKYARD !

    ** Mia Mottley says….go to GUYANA and farm on rab land @ US $ 5.00 per acre !

    But according to Owen & Mia POLICY……the fertile BAJAN soils should remain for…. golf course / condiminium development !

    Only in…….FIRST WORLD BARBADOS !!!!!

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  3. BU,

    I beg to differ that such an AD is a wasted one.

    The callous nature by which agriculture has been treated by this BLP gov’t …….is what , in view that has given rise to such negative perceptions !

    If this BLP gov’t had not pursued a misguided policy….of selling agricultural lands for housing / golf course / condiminium development…..in essence the BLP policy of allowing land to fetch it’s highest economic value .

    Then agriculture would have flourished in this country.

    Our food import bill and by extension…our cost of living could have been contained.

    But nooooo………now that Cost of Living has caught the BLP gov’t attention 2 months before the 2008…….check out the BLP response :

    ** Owen says…plant food in yuh…BACKYARD !

    ** Mia Mottley says….go to GUYANA and farm on rab land @ US $ 5.00 per acre !

    But according to Owen & Mia POLICY……the fertile BAJAN soils should remain for…. golf course / condiminium development !

    Only in…….FIRST WORLD BARBADOS !!!!!

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  4. We had a post which asked the question, if you have land in sugar cane which is a cash crop (that you are making a loss on btw) and you change the use of that land to golf courses which you will also use to generate funds (at a profit). What is so undesirable about taking out of agriculture.

    http://notesfromthemargin.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/a-controversial-viewpoint-on-agriculture-in-barbados/

    The future of agriculture has much more to do with the second question than the first.

    Marginal

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  5. After elections, when the reality of what is happening in this world with fuel prices, food prices etc kick in (around september or so) there will be a different approach to answering this question.
    We will see who can eat golf, or even cash from golf…

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  6. Two problems with golf courses is that they are big polluters of the environment and that they require a lot of water.

    They pollute because the grass is kept extremely short. This weakens the grass, which has to be sustained by heavy applications of pesticides and fertilizers.

    The heavy irrigation then washes this mix downwards and possibly into the drinking water supply. We used to get a yearly spike of nitrates with sugar cane cultivation, but pesticides are worse.

    An intelligent agricultural policy is essential to the health of the general public. I am delighted that the DLP have made this an issue.

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  7. There is no difference between golf courses and heavily manicured private lawns, the more I look and see I am realizing that agriculture and fresh produce does not have much significance here in BB. I am happy growing what I need and selling the rest, purely as hobby…selling what I don’t need sustains my hobby. Then again my family enjoys eating fresh vegetables.

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  8. Speaking of agricultural policies and food self sufficiency etc., I came across this recent posting (below) which is basically a review of the book “Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation” describing how a few multi-national agri-businesses are intent on taking over complete control of the world’s food supplies and are using genetic modification of crops and foodstuffs as a foot in the door towards this end.

    The genetically modified foods (over which controversy is still raging as to their ultimate safety to consumers) can be patented and those who own those patents are determined to ensure their patented crops will take over from the non GMO (and non patentable) varieties many poorer farmers and countries rely on. (Something to consider when we try to decide whether it is ultimately in our own best interest to allow other countries to grow all our food for us).

    In other words, the big push from the multinational agribusinesses like Monsanto etc. to force consumers into eating genetically modified crops whether they want them or not, is to push out the non GMO varieties from commercial use so that ultimately the Monsanto’s of this world will have control over the worlds food supply.

    Here is a snip from the intro of the review:

    Reviewing F. William Engdahl’s “Seeds of Destruction” (Part I)

    Bill Engdahl is a leading researcher, economist and analyst of the New World Order who’s written on issues of energy, politics and economics for over 30 years. He contributes regularly to publications like Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine, Grant’s Investor.com, European Banker and Business Banker International. He’s also a frequent speaker at geopolitical, economic and energy related international conferences and is a distinguished Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization where he’s a regular contributor.

    Engdahl also wrote two important books – “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order” in 2004. It’s an essential history of geopolitics and the importance of oil. Engdahl explains that America’s post-WW II dominance rests on two pillars and one commodity – unchallengeable military power and the dollar as the world’s reserve currency combined with the quest to control global oil and other energy resources.

    Engdahl’s newest book is just out from the Centre for Research on Globalization. It’s a sequel to his first one called “Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation” and subject of this review. It’s the diabolical story of how Washington and four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply and why that prospect is chilling. The book’s compelling contents are reviewed below in-depth so readers will know the type future Henry Kissinger had in mind in 1970 when he said: “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.” (my emphasis /GreenMonkey)

    Remember also, this cabal is one of many interconnected ones with fearsome power and ruthless intent to use it – Big Banks controlling the Federal Reserve and our money, Big Oil our world energy resources, Big Media our information, Big Pharma our health, Big Technology our state-of-the-art everything and watching us, Big Defense our wars, Big Pentagon waging them, and other corporate predators exploiting our lives for profit. Engdahl’s book focuses brilliantly on one of them. To fully cover its vital contents, this review will be in three parts for more detail and to make it easily digestible.

    Part I of “Seeds of Destruction”

    In 2003, Jeffrey Smith’s “Seeds of Deception” was published. It exposed the dangers of untested and unregulated genetically engineered foods most people eat every day with no knowledge of the potential health risks. Efforts to inform the public have been quashed, reliable science has been buried, and consider what happened to two distinguished scientists.

    One was Ignatio Chapela, a microbial ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In September, 2001, he was invited to a carefully staged meeting with Fernando Ortiz Monasterio, Mexico’s Director of the Commission of Biosafety in Mexico City. The experience left Chapela shaken and angry as he explained. Monasterio attacked him for over an hour. “First he trashed me. He let me know how damaging to the country and how problematic my information was to be.”

    Chapela referred to what he and a UC Berkeley graduate student, David Quist, discovered in 2000 about genetically engineered contamination of Mexican corn in violation of a government ban on these crops in 1998. Corn is sacred in Mexico, the country is home to hundreds of indigenous varieties that crossbreed naturally, and GM contamination is permanent and unthinkable – but it happened by design.

    Chapela and Quist tested corn varieties in more than a dozen state of Oaxaca communities and discovered 6% of the plants contaminated with GM corn. Oaxaca is in the country’s far South so Chapela knew if contamination spread there, it was widespread throughout Mexico. It’s unavoidable because NAFTA allows imported US corn with 30% of it at the time genetically modified. Now it’s heading for nearly double that amount, and if not contained, it soon could be all of it.

    Continued here:
    http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11853

    Here is a snip from Part II of the review:

    Washington Launches the GMO Revolution

    The roots of the story go back decades, but Engdahl explains the science of “biological and genetic-modification of plants and other life forms first” came out of US research labs in the 1970s when no one noticed. They soon would because the Reagan administration was determined to make America dominant in this emerging field. The biotech agribusiness industry was especially favored, and companies in the early 1980s raced to develop GMO plants, livestock and GMO-based animal drugs. Washington made it easy for them with an unregulated, business-friendly climate that persisted ever since under Republicans and Democrats alike.

    Food safety and public health issues aren’t considered vital if they conflict with profits. So the entire population is being used as lab rats for these completely new, untested and potentially hazardous products. And leading the effort to develop them is a company with a “long record of fraud, cover-up, bribery,” deceit and disdain for the public interest – Monsanto.

    Its first product was saccharin that was later proved to be a carcinogen. It then got into chemicals, plastics and became notorious for Agent Orange that was used to defoliate Vietnam jungles in the 1960s and 1970s and exposed hundreds of thousands of civilians and US troops to deadly dioxin, one of the most toxic of all known compounds.

    Along with others in the industry, Monsanto is also a shameless polluter. It has a history of secretly dumping some of the most lethal substances known in water and soil and getting away with it. Today on its web site, however, the company ignores its record and calls itself “an agricultural company (applying) innovation and technology to help farmers around the world be successful, produce healthier foods, better animal feeds and more fiber, while also reducing agriculture’s impact on our environment.” Engdahl proves otherwise in his thorough research that’s covered below in detail.

    In spite of its past, Monsanto and other GMO giants got unregulated free rein in the 1980s and especially after George HW Bush became president in 1989. His administration opened “Pandora’s Box” so no “unnecessary regulations would hamper them. Thereafter, “not one single new regulatory law governing biotech or GMO products was passed then or later (despite all the) unknown risks and possible health dangers.”

    In a totally unfettered marketplace, foxes now guard the henhouse because the system was made self-regulatory. An elder Bush Executive Order assured it. It ruled GMO plants and foods were “substantially equivalent” to ordinary ones of the same variety like corn, wheat or rice. This established the principle of “substantial equivalence” as the “lynchpin of the whole GMO revolution.” It was pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo, but was now law, and Engdahl equated it to a potential biologically catastrophic “Andromeda Strain,” no longer the world of science fiction.

    Continued here:
    http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11878

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  9. “There is no difference between golf courses and heavily manicured private lawns”

    Unfortunately there is a big difference. “Heavily manicured private lawns” are bad, but not nearly as bad as a golf course – big difference is the height of the grass, extremely short on golf courses which causes the problems that I previously stated.

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  10. James Paul can do with some help to get rid of Rommell Marshall. Marshall has not done anything for anyone for a very long time . Help get rid of him.

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  11. Erskine Griffith was hired as a man who because he knew the rules of the world game would help us develop an agriculture policy. To be honest I can’t see any significant strides made since he was handed the ministry.

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  12. I think that Erskine Griffith has done a reasonable job in a ministry that nobody wants, fewer care about and which has very serious macro issues to manage on a minimal budget. Most of Barbados agriculture is inefficient due to high labour costs and no economies of scale and the rest is extremely small. Niche agriculture is one solution and at least it’s been tried with sugar and cotton brands (although the former seem to be more successful than the latter). The sugar industry at least has a plan (although it’s expensive, and the justification is a little dubious) and the rest seems to have been reasonably well managed (or at least not totally screwed up as per some other ministries). What we don’t see is an overarching policy but, then again, anything serious would be extremely expensive and since when has agriculture attracted serious money ? And just getting back to the subject, taking land out of sugar and into golf courses/ condos is environmentally a Bad Thing. There is increased run-off, it loosens the thin top soil and washes it away and it contributes to flooding. Think Holetown in the rains.

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  13. The simple fact that seems to be ignored, is that condominium and golf course development are mistakenly intended to attract tourists. However, we must never forget that, to a large extent, tourists come to Barbados because of the character of the place, and its varied landscapes. Part of the attraction was the neat, garden-like appearance of the countryside while it was under sugar cane. That scenario is disappearing fast – just check Vaucluse – and even the manicured appearance of golf courses cannot compensate, because they do not cover all the land turning to bush, and worse, access to them is restricted to the very few privileged or rich enough to use them. The policy of selling-off land in exchange for one-off foreign direct investment is something that I think will come back to haunt Barbados in a big way. It is a policy which says, “we have run out of ideas.” It is a policy that ignores the fact that we have tourism competitors all over the world who treasure their environment and their heritage infrastructure, and it is these desitnations that tourists will flock to in the future. After all, what is attractive in a landscape of rooftops as far as the eye can see, broken only by the green of the occasional private golf course?

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  14. Far too many believe that tourists come for sea, sun, s.. and relaxation alone. Why can’t the Soil Conservation Unit, Dairy and Blackbelly Sheep Farms etc. be used as part of our tourist “attractions”?
    The same way the Highland Tours used jitneys to take visitors through canefields, gullies and farms at Waterhall and Apes Hill, why can’t others do the same? An idea similar to what the Highland Tours did was presented by Keith Simmons to a group of youth belonging to a community-based organization, in 1986; they laughed! I am sure that the Highland Tours came after that year.
    If we look hard enough and think creatively, I am convinced that Agriculture and Tourism can be twinned. Add to this Community-based Heritage Tourism through which communities can be involved and I am sure that Tourism can really start to become “our business” and not just the rich and foreign.

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  15. Pingback: Global Voices Online » Barbados: The Issue of Agriculture


  16. I once met a chef at Codrington college who wanted to know why local dishes are not ‘fancied up’ and sold in up market restaurants he was planning to approach local farmers to grow organic vegetables for his restaurant! How can we feed all these people that we are trying to attract to our shores? How will we feed ourselves if we cannot afford to import the foreign fruits and vegetables we have developed a taste for? Champaigne tastes, with mauby pockets? That describes the average bajan. Added to this most Barbadians do not want to be ‘slave labour’ (agricultural work is best left to indo-guyanese). We have become a white collar, fast money society and we have taught our children that only slaves cut cane and pick cotton. Why are we surprised that no one cares about agriculture? Nearly all the plantations have indo-guyanese working now the only bajans in the fields are female and generally over 50 yrs.

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  17. Watchman…
    Totally agree. It can be twinned.
    Hope you read my article on Community Tourism published in the Business Authority last Monday.

    Just so you know, some of us have been doing what you are suggesting for several years.
    But not enough!

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  18. Why should anyone care about agriculture in Barbados?
    The farmer gets zero encouragement.
    * Poor soils, of minimal depth!
    * Minimal rainfall: great for tourism -killer for plant growth!
    * A labour population dat now get ouka slavery and DOAN want to go back in dat!
    (can U blame dem?)
    * Praedial larceny with zero help from the local Police!

    YOU TELL ME why anyone should care about thankless agriculture in Barbados

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