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Is Agriculture and Food Security Important?

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Indar Weir, Minister of Agriculture and Food Security

The Ministry of Agriculture under the leadership of David Estwick in the former government became an invisible ministry. While we accept that a lack of resources would have impacted how government carried out its business, a nation that relegates food security to the back burner should expect to be haunted by the decision in a volatile global sphere.

How difficult is it to cultivate linkages between locally produced agriculture, tourism, government (Barbados School Meals, Queen Elizabeth Hospital) and the wider community to guarantee sufficient demand? What is the scorecard of the Barbados Agriculture Society (BAS)? The output from the agriculture sector based on the central bank reports tracking GDP by Sector and Acticity has not shown any appreciable increase in the last decade.

A few weeks ago BU family member Bentley Norville shared the following document to poke those currently responsible to prioritized matters pertaining to agriculture. We hope current minister of agriculture and FOOD SECURITY Indar Weir takes heed.

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278 responses to “Is Agriculture and Food Security Important?”

  1. John Avatar
    John

    Seeing WI fight for once is a most pleasing thing for me!!

    The abject surrenders I hated to see.

    It doesn’t matter if WI win or lose, all I want to see is a fight!!

  2. John Avatar
    John

  3. David Avatar
    David

    @Hants

    The Barbados you were raised has changed, some will say for the worse. The growth of the so-called middle class means we have families with little appetite due to lack of time and copycat lifestyles, 4000 square foot plots with covenants to engage in farming at a household level in the same way you did.

    Then there is the lack of leadership of the sector at the national level, the subject of another blog. Like you stated, it will probably take a catastrophic event to force the change in behaviour.

  4. Are-we-there-yet Avatar
    Are-we-there-yet

    David re. your 11:04 am post;

    I’ve just come back home and am leaving again shortly so I’ll check out the Singapore info later tonight or tomorrow and give my views on it then.

    But, in the interim, I should perhaps explain where I am coming from in this debate on Food Security and its relevance to Barbados in these times. I have worked throughout the Caribbean as a consultant in areas that directly impinge on food security in countries like the Cayman Islands, where the food security model is the daily early morning plane loads of miscellaneous food items from Florida destined for the large Caymanian supermarkets. These planes take back out the only significant exported agricultural produce, Citrus fruit juices, that Grand Cayman produces from 2 large farms. It does also produce beautiful Cattle primarily for agricultural shows and Turtles and Fish in lesser volumes for consumption. My working involvement with Food security issues also extended to the other end of the food security scale eg. Jamaica, where there is significant production of Agricultural produce of many types and much of the produce is exported to metropolitan countries. Indeed, the Jamaica model justifies that Government funding the USDA to maintain a branch of its APHIS agency there for pre inspection of produce destined for various ports in the USA. Barbados, like T&T and the various OECS territories fits somewhere between the Cayman and the Jamaican models.

    One doesn’t really need to google food security to understand what the term means. The term is totally self explanatory and relates to the ability of a family or a Country to provide food for itself, especially under unaccustomed circumstances such as drought, hurricanes, etc., If one is using it to describe the ability of a country to feed itself it subsumes the mix of policies and actions that together allow the central government to ensure that the country is able to feed itself either by producing all the necessary produce for its total population or by providing enough foreign exchange to purchase enough food from overseas to do so at all times of the year and through normal hard times.

    Government policies try to ensure that food security is one of its top priorities and that adequate supplies of nutritious food is available to all and every citizen at all times. The policies to do this are multifaceted and are sometimes provided in linkages that are not necessarily overt. The Government School feeding programmes are all intimately concerned with food security. The recent calls for sensible treatment of non-communicable diseases is also heavily concerned with food security.

    Food security encompasses a wide range of disciplines. The Economist cannot claim that it is his, nor the Medical doctor, nor the Agronomist, nor the Statistician nor the Food Scientist, nor any of the other myriad disciplines that sometimes, in a blinkered way, lay claim to the soul of Food security.

  5. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    BP 110/69 after a morning’s “food security” work. May not be so bad for a person in the 7th decade.

  6. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    @ David,

    4000 square feet ?

    The chicken pen was bigger than that. lol

  7. David Avatar
    David

    @Hants

    This is the reality at the average middle household level. While growing a kitchen garden is starting to catch on, keeping stocks with existing covenants will not support.

    Then there is the lack of commitment at the national level for reasons discussed.

  8. millertheanunnaki Avatar
    millertheanunnaki

    @ David June 25, 2018 7:33 AM
    “We have a generation, or two, that have no taste for local products. The challenge will not be just about growing food, it will ve encouraging locals to buy it.”

    We are sure you have heard the adage: ‘Necessity is the Mother of Invention”.
    So why not adapt it a bit and say: ‘Starvation is the Father of Bajan agriculture’?

    As Hants has been preaching like Peter and the miller like Paul, it will take only one major crisis either international, natural or manmade like the drying up of the forex well of sweet living to send Bajans back to the fields for their survival.

    And that is the only benefit which could have accrued had the Bajan electorate returned the DLP to office.

    For as sure as night follows day the Bajan Mickey Mouse dollar would have been devalued to such an extent as to make the cost of imported processed food out of the ‘normal’ buying reach of the average poor Bajan, NSRL removed and all.

  9. John Avatar
    John

    @Hants
    The Barbados you were raised has changed, some will say for the worse. The growth of the so-called middle class means we have families with little appetite due to lack of time and copycat lifestyles, 4000 square foot plots with covenants to engage in farming at a household level in the same way you did.
    Then there is the lack of leadership of the sector at the national level, the subject of another blog. Like you stated, it will probably take a catastrophic event to force the change in behaviour.

  10. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    re there is the lack of leadership of the sector at the national level,
    WHY NOT CO-OPT SOME BU BULLSHITTERS TO LEAD?
    INCLUDING SOME HERE THAT NEVER PLANT NOTHING ON NEVER EVER KEPT LIVESTOCK

  11. John Avatar
    John

    @Hants
    The Barbados you were raised has changed, some will say for the worse. The growth of the so-called middle class means we have families with little appetite due to lack of time and copycat lifestyles, 4000 square foot plots with covenants to engage in farming at a household level in the same way you did.Then there is the lack of leadership of the sector at the national level, the subject of another blog. Like you stated, it will probably take a catastrophic event to force the change in behaviour.

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    It is all about the removal of sugar subsidies that supported Barbados for so long.

    The geniuses we have here figured all that land would no longer be used so golf courses and housing development were the order of the day.

    They were incapable of understanding the impact of not having enough water and never understood how their own country worked!!

    A land grab ensued with “new owners” having no comprehension of how to make the land work.

    What we have now is land being viewed as a commodity and used in all sorts of money laundering and Ponzi schemes.

    CLICO and St. John is the perfect example.

    Land is a big ticket item, ideal for money laundering as large sums are involved.

    The forces at work here are beyond comprehension to most persons.

    The problem is the “leaders” and their greed …. they never took the time to understand how tenuous an existence we lead on this tiny, now insignificant island.

    Every institution is now corrupt.

  12. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    @Hants June 25, 2018 4:18 PM “4000 square feet? The chicken pen was bigger than that. lol.”

    Maybe so. But don’t be too quick to laugh. But I’ve a relative with a 3970 square foot lot which includes probably the sweetest mango tree in Barbados which bears from May to September [I haven’t bought a mango in more than three decades] I’ve already eaten three mangoes today, and I have seven left for tomorrow and the next day; a few banana trees, and upfront a few pigeon peas for the Christmas jug-jug, and rice and peas. And sometimes a few sweet potato slips.

    Another relative with a similar sized lot, will have the sweetest pumpkins come conkie time. We may not all have Texas or Australian sized lots, but while we work to achieve our plantations we do the best with what we have.

  13. David Avatar
    David

    John not completely accurate.

    Under the Arthur regime he committed to building a service economy.

    Establishing world class golf courses to support that model was the idea.

    This BLP administration needs to signal to Barbadians what is the plan it is not about growing crops but as AWTY stated, having access to food whether it is through functional cooperation with Guyana , Dominica and others if cost is prohibitive to do it in Barbados.

  14. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    @John June 25, 2018 4:43 PM “how to make the land work…The problem is the “leaders” and their greed.”

    Don’t get tie up John. Barbados was built on greed. Our “leaders” have always been greedy. Slavery could not have existed in Barbados from 1625 to 1838 were it not for greed.

    So greed and greedy leaders is nothing new. Maybe some of our greedy black leaders have learned from the traditional greedy white leaders. Nothing new at all about greed.

    And one does not make the land work. Where I come from WE WORK the land.

  15. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    @Georgie Porgie June 25, 2018 2:30 PM “I wonder if there any on BU who know about the days when folk would go to a plantation in the 60’s and buy a rod of potatoes, or yams or eddoes? We used to have food for a year, lasting till the next crop season.”

    And some of us like my family did not buy yams from the plantation. On May Day [that is when free child labour, ie. me and my siblings, was available, lolll!!!] we planted an acre in yams. On New year’s Day [again that is when free child labour was available, lolll!!!] we harvested them, stored them in the dry cellar and had enough to feed a very large family [up to 11 people at times] from January to August or beyond.

    Sometimes the American diplomats on their way to/from fancy receptions would drive by very slowly, probably wondering about all that child labour. I would give anything to read those classified reports 50 years later. Lolll!!!

  16. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    re And some of us like my family did not buy yams from the plantation.
    Well we had to go to the plantations for that stuff, as we lived in town, but we always had a kitchen garden and kept chickens , a few sheep and pigs.
    An experienceof which I have very fond memories.
    When we moved to the country, we did more.

  17. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    windies 14/5 in second innings at oval
    they need some spinach from SS

  18. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    Georgie Porgie June 25, 2018 3:15 PM “Are you asking SS if she put eggs under a setting hen, or are you asking if she had any of her eggs fertilised. Just asking.”

    Naughty, naughty.

    As a friend of mine says I have been “called away” so I am at zero risk of anybody fertilizing my non-existent eggs.

    Hallelujah!!!

  19. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    To be clear.I was a real farmer for a short period of time and made a modest living from it.

    However I gave it up for more lucrative and challenging employment.

  20. John Avatar
    John

    John not completely accurate.
    Under the Arthur regime he committed to building a service economy.
    Establishing world class golf courses to support that model was the idea.

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Golf was supposed the greatest filip for Barbados since the late 1980’s, well before O$A came along!!

  21. John Avatar
    John

    Georgie Porgie
    June 25, 2018 5:48 PM

    windies 14/5 in second innings at oval
    they need some spinach from SS

    +++++++++++++++++++

    Ah boy … lets see if they can muster a fight back!!

    64 on

  22. David Avatar
    David

    Clearly you deliberately missed the point made.

  23. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    Simple Simon June 25, 2018 6:25 PM
    sORRY SISTER
    I THOUGHT YOU HAD COME OUT OF RETIREMENT LIKE SARAH AND ELIZABETH AND LADIES OF THAT ILK AND VINTAGE! LOL
    YOU KEEP SWEET
    WHEN I COME HOME I COMING TO ST THOMAS FOR SOME OF THAT SWEET HOME FOOD YOU TALKING BOUT

  24. John Avatar
    John

    Maybe some of our greedy black leaders have learned from the traditional greedy white leaders.

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    Nope, Barbados is in a mess like at no other time!!

  25. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    featured a healthy menu of scrambled tofu with pita bread

    Take a look at the fruit in the picture. Food security ? Home grown ?

    http://www.nationnews.com/nationnews/news/170569/bh-challenge-reaches-midway

  26. John Avatar
    John

    And some of us like my family did not buy yams from the plantation. On May Day [that is when free child labour, ie. me and my siblings, was available, lolll!!!] we planted an acre in yams. On New year’s Day [again that is when free child labour was available, lolll!!!] we harvested them, stored them in the dry cellar and had enough to feed a very large family [up to 11 people at times] from January to August or beyond.

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++

    I thought you told us your family was starving in those bad old days.

    Food security means being willing to get your hands dirty because food sure isn’t made in a Supermarket!!

  27. John Avatar
    John

    … just as eggs aren’t fertilized without a rooster!!

    A chicken will sit on its unfertilized eggs just as it will if the eggs are fertilized.

  28. John Avatar
    John

    It is very important you get a good rooster!!

    This video explains all you need to know!!

  29. Are-we-there-yet Avatar
    Are-we-there-yet

    David;

    Here is a good self explanatory article on Food security. It analyses the factors which have led to an asessment that Singapore is the 2nd most food secure country in the World, surpassed only by the US.

    https://thediplomat.com/2015/09/singapores-impressive-food-security/

    I don’t think that the methodology involved in the derivation of the numerous complex factors, which would have gone into the computation of the indices, is likely to be of great interest to the typical BU reader or blogger. The final index is what is of importance in hinting at a ranking of the countries of the world re. their food security. FAO has done indices of Food Vulnerability in many countries of the world. Those indices are related to and similar to, but not the same, as the food security indices used in The Diplomat article above. I think standards exist for arriving at these FIVIMS (If my memory serves me correctly). I’ll look for the information available on any recent food security or food vulnerability indexes for Barbados asap.

    What I think is important for our discussions on food security are the contributions of people like Simple Simon who actually systematically answered your query in her first post from the standpoint of a small person’s interfacing with the real concerns of food security. John also gave some important insights.

    The overall, Planning UNit type, view of Food Security issues is of importance in that the various studies etc. can help to inform and monitor the effects of myriad Government policies but the real hard core aspects of food security issues are best seen from the type of issues and experiences related here by SS.

  30. David Avatar
    David

    @AWTY

    Where the Singapore model is useful to borrow is the policy initiatives at the state level, the technology used to grow crops of a diverse nature and the access to a workforce fit for purpose therefore no need to manage the cultural nuance of a Barbados. More importantly the success of agriculture is sustain as a component of an efficient overarching national ethos/culture. In others words, Singapore appears to have addressed food security by making it a key success factor to measuring economic performance. In Barbados agriculture is not assigned such a high priority.

  31. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    IT IS FUN TO WAKE UP AND READ THE BUMBLING BRIMBLING BRAYING ON BU
    AWTY THE NEW DPD-ESQUE WANT TO BE INTELLECTUAL, AFTER SURFING THE NET TO FIND ARTICLES ON FOOD SECURITY INCLUDING THE “SINGAPORE MODEL”, NOW COMES TO THE STELLAR CONCLUSION BELOW

    What I think is important for our discussions on food security are the contributions of people like Simple Simon who actually systematically answered your query in her first post from the standpoint of a small person’s interfacing with the real concerns of food security. John also gave some important insights.

    THIS IS THE SAME AWTY THAT CLAIMS THAT MY PDF’S AND PRESENTATIONS ON FOOD SECURITY WOULD BE IRRELEVANT TO THE BAJAN CONTEXT
    CLEARLY AWTY THE NEW DPD-ESQUE WANT TO BE INTELLECTUAL KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT FOOD SECURITY AND IS ONLY TRYING TO KEEP A THREAD GOING THAT HAS BONE NOWHERE, EXCEPT TO BE A SOURCE OF MUCH MIRTH AS BARBADOS CONTINUES TO FLOUNDER.

    BARE MOCK SPORT IN DE RUM SHOP , MAAAN

  32. millertheanunnaki Avatar
    millertheanunnaki

    @ John June 26, 2018 1:56 AM
    “… just as eggs aren’t fertilized without a rooster!!
    A chicken will sit on its unfertilized eggs just as it will if the eggs are fertilized.”

    Ye Old Johnny, you project yourself as knowing a great deal about the mating game of roosters aka cocks in Bajan parlance.

    When you were a ‘small’ boy called Little Dickey Johnny there must have been plenty of other little johnnies running around the yard after you had finished ‘handling the mother-hens’, not so Sir John of all ‘threading’?

    Dear Sir John, since you were (and could still be) so intimately involved in the reproducing business relationships between Ms Henny-Penny and Mr. Cocky-Locky would you dare to tell us if you have ever seen or heard about a ‘lying’ rooster (Bajan fowl-cock) ‘laying’ an egg?

    How about those ‘girly’ cockerels who adamantly refuse to jump on top of the ‘brooding’ hens? It seems as if there can even be eunuchs among the macho cocks fit only for an early pot.

    Now that would have been a sight for poor Johnny’s sore eyes!

    While you are at it, peering through the wire mesh of the ‘fowl-pen’ watching the reproductive action you can also research whether the eggs sold in the supermarkets by the dozens have been ‘created’ through the act of one real cocky-dickey fertilizing the eggs of numerous ‘female’ birds on the farm.
    There is a job going for you Sir John! Just send to Tropical Eggs Farm your résumé listing the many birds you have ‘razed’ or raised in your boyhood days.

  33. Are-we-there-yet Avatar
    Are-we-there-yet

    David;

    True! Very well said! You’ve got it in a nutshell. Singapore appears to have addressed food security by making it a key success factor to measuring economic performance. In Barbados agriculture is not assigned such a high priority.

    But I think that the cultural nuance is of greater importance in the mix than you suggest. The government needs to push policies that will optimise the local production of nutritious food at prices that are affordable to the poorest in the society. At the same time it has to ensure that policies are in place to allow a much larger proportion of people, than are now evident, to grow a fairly substantial part of their food needs. All this would be within a cultural matrix where the youth are in the main addicted to foreign foods presented in packaging that might be more expensive than the food itself and Agriculture is probably at its lowest ebb as as a beacon for gainful employment in the society.

    How do you force our people to revert to nutritious traditional foods? It can’t be easy, but it has to be done. How does the government determine what policies and actions must be the priorities to arrive at the best place re. food security for the Island? What are the critical paths? What about the other sectoral policies that are of themselves sectorially important but are not associated with a sensible pragmatic food security policy?

    As someone hinted earlier in this discussion Necessity is the mother of invention and I suspect that necessity will force the Government and the people to adopt interlocking family and country wide strategies to ensure food security when the austerity measures start to bite.

  34. Are-we-there-yet Avatar
    Are-we-there-yet

    GP; re your 8:45 am post;

    Get thee behind me, SATAN.

  35. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    RE Get thee behind me, SATAN.
    ATWY I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT NOR DO I ASSOCIATE WITH YOUR FATHER THE DEVIL………. I FLEE FROM HIM
    HERE LISTENING TO A COMPILATION OF THE PSALMS UNTIL TIME FOR CRICKET

    I ONLY TOLD THE TRUTH SIR MR PSEUDO WANNABE INTELLECTUAL LOL LOL

    How do you force our people to revert to nutritious traditional foods? It can’t be easy, but it has to be done. How does the government determine what policies and actions must be the priorities to arrive at the best place re. food security for the Island? What are the critical paths? What about the other sectoral policies that are of themselves sectorially important but are not associated with a sensible pragmatic food security policy?

    VERY INTELLECTUAL CRAP TRAP……….BUT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH REALITY
    HORSE LONG GONE OUT OF THE STABLE

    RE ARE POISED FOR ANARCHY AND DESTRUCTION LIKE THE USA CURRENTLY

    THE ANTICHRIST AND THE TRIBULATION PERIOD IS SOON UPON US ah lie
    wunnah better start studying the PREPPERS LOL

  36. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    @ ATWY
    PSALM 16

    9 I have set the LORD alway before me; * for he is on my right hand, therefore I shall not fall.
    10 Wherefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth1: * my flesh also shall rest in hope.

  37. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    @ georgie Porgie who wrote ” How do you force our people to revert to nutritious traditional foods? ”

    When they go to the supermarket and there is no imported food they will eat whatever they can find.

    Barbados is fortunate to have the basics to grow and produce food.

  38. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    Hants June 26, 2018 10:35 AM

    @ georgie Porgie who wrote ” How do you force our people to revert to nutritious traditional foods? ”

    HANTS, PLEASE KINDLY NOTE THAT THE ABOVE WAS A QUOTATION FROM ATWY THE DPD-ESQUE INTELLECTUAL WANNA BEE WHO IS, DESPITE BEING VERY LOCQUACIOUS HAS NOT REALLY SAID ANYTHING, BECAUSE HE HAS A STERILE BRAIN, AND CANT PRODUCE ANYTHING ORIGINAL…..OR AT ALL

    HE IS LIKE THE OTHER BU BRIMBLERS……WHO YOU WILL NOTE WILL NOT AND COME HERE, CAUSE THEY DONT HAVE NUTTIN TO SAY EITHER, CAUSE THIS IS NOT POLITICS

  39. David Avatar
    David

    @AWTY

    Agree to most of what you wrote. SS contribution is more household in focus, the issue with agriculture is a lack of a holistic approach. The idea of the socall middle class forking and planting will not produce the food we need neither occur overnight, the change is important to assist with mindset change with the next generation how important agriculture is to promoting food security.

    Tough job ahead.

  40. John Avatar
    John

    You can’t farm broilers on the large scale you see today and operate with a yard fowl mentality.

  41. John Avatar
    John

    Yet the survival of many households depends on thinking at the yard fowl level.

    Some people get beyond the household level and break free from the yard fowl model, key to survival.

    They make it big.

    It is wrong to envy them their success.

  42. Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right Avatar
    Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right

    Few people know and fewer still care as to the presence and purpose and operations of the $-H Organization in Barbados.

    While it is not primarily an agricultural organization is has a not in-substantive operation in this arena.

    Reaching out to this organisation to establish a community based small garden or hydroponic project will be a favourably received project.

    But again UNLESS WE BAJANS see an “I want a plantation” project Gulliver Type projects which seek to propagate at the micro level and serve several small communities WILL NOT BE PROJECTS THAT ARE first of all, CONCEIVED and thereafter IMPLEMENTED.

  43. Well, Well Avatar
    Well, Well

    The. growing of medicinal marijuana also needs to be intertwined and combined into agriculture, it is a crop and becoming more and more valuable by the minute….the benefits are huge health wise, can’t lose if your grow your own food and medical marijuana.

    http://www.nationnews.com/nationnews/news/170809/minister-jamaica-stake-claim-local-marijuana-industry

    ‘KINGSTON – Science and Technology Minister Dr Andrew Wheatley says Jamaica must stake its claim on all local strains for marijuana for research and development.
    ..
    Jamaica is said to have some of the best or finest marijuana strains in the world, which include the Jamaican Lamb’s Breath (or Lamb’s Bread) and Marley’s Collie.

    “It is like our birthright and we cannot allow persons from outside to come and take away our birthright.”
    “We have to position ourselves, we have to take on the mantle (and) do what we have to do . . . as it relates to medicinal marijuana research,” he said.”

    //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

    “Twenty states in the United States have already decriminalised or legalised marijuana. Over 30 countries have done the same. In these areas there are no penalties for having small quantities for personal use.”

    /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

    It will not stop the countries that demonized it and criminalized black people for using the plant to continue to be hypocrites about it, while creating labs across the world to continue to harvest the plant, refine it and turn it into pharmaceutical products worth trillions of dollars in profits to them.

    “The leading scientific researchers of cannabis are at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Marijuana is illegal in Israel, but some of the strongest strains in the world are said to be grown on government approved farms. Professor Raphael Mechoulam of the University’s Faculty of Medicine was the first to isolate and synthesize THC, the most active ingredient in marijuana.

    In an interview with the Huffington Post, Mechoulam admits that it is not in farms, but in laboratories around the world where the real advances in marijuana research are being made. Companies are racing to refine marijuana into a marketable pharmaceutical product.

    Over 10 000 Israelis are already licensed to receive the raw unrefined plant for medicinal purposes. There are stories coming out of Israel of amazing sounding results.

    Observers have argued that war on drugs is a failure and actually promotes what it claims to attack. Critics of the drug war suggest that it has not made a dent in drug use, it criminalises users, most of whom pose no threat to society, it is biased against certain countries, races and classes, and it is extremely costly for taxpayers to maintain.”

  44. Are-we-there-yet Avatar
    Are-we-there-yet

    GP;

    I’ve been scanning through many of your contributions to BU and I can’t see anything original in any of them, even your postings on the health challenges of the late DT. Most of your postings are regurgitations from the Bible that need no particular brain power. The other posts are disruptive, combative statements that in general add nothing substantive to the debates.

    Re. this particular topic of Food security, you have not added one iota of substance to the discussion and you seem to have strategically avoided disclosing your qualifications to teach Food Security, as surely the degree in Medicine, which you consistently trumpet as evidence of your claimed super brainiac powers, cannot constitute such a qualification.

    What minor Food Security course did you actually teach and how were you qualified to teach it? Let the BU family know as the people with actual brains here may be interested in finding out if your main objective in posting here is to disrupt and provide nothing substantive in any of the conversations you enter as blowback for an imagined slight from BT.

    I suspect you are accurately describing YOURSELF when you shouted above “…..AWTY…..HAS NOT REALLY SAID ANYTHING, BECAUSE HE HAS A STERILE BRAIN, AND CANT PRODUCE ANYTHING ORIGINAL…..OR AT ALL”

    You display most of the characteristics of a common or garden TROLL, Sir.

    I will feed you no more.

  45. de pedantic Dribbler Avatar
    de pedantic Dribbler

    Wow, what a discourse….@Are-We, I am amazed you allowed the doc GP disruptive, attack style narrative to mal-season your food to distaste😁… that’s the man in his BU frolic.

    That said I’ll refine the WHO or UN or whomever ‘food security’ definition a bit for this palaver.

    First there is food sufficiency and the economics thereof. In that regard I am surprised you labelled the public move from the cane crop and related farm labour by Barrow et al as a nexus or origin (my interpretation of the debate) to current issues of food sufficiency.

    Surely that is too facile a conclusion considering the entire history of the plantation based farm system. No need to prolong a debate on all that stuff but in brief its quite clear that Barbados still maintained significant food production facilities in agriculture, dairy, meat and chicken production even as they made imports.

    Most definitely one can argue about govt priorities on land use over the years but is it really difficult to decide whether to import beef from a lower cost farmer with large expanses in New Zealand or the US and use or more limited land for high revenue earning golf or luxuary condiminiums!

    Is this not the genesis of practical economics and viable world trade actions!

    One small additional note (tangential really)…despite the apparent local shift away from agriculture as you suggested, you certainly recall that for many years we sent workers to US to gain economic benefit by working in agriculture on the Farm Program. That said to further my point that the local ‘shift’ was less about a dismissial of a simple ‘food security’ factoid than it was for far more complex determinations. Just saying!

    Now one last and I gone….let’s talk about safety, biological and physicsl security of food….oh lawd..this is the doc’s area of expertise so looka trouble!

    The Blogmaster said nicely that “[w]e have a generation, or two, that have no taste for local products. The challenge will not be just about growing food, it will ve encouraging locals to buy it” . And that is true in many regards other places too. In Bim and beyond young folks only want seedless fruits or those so finely produced to be even textured, minimal ruffage etc etc. Genetically done in short.

    Does this not then initiate many of the health issues that the goodly doctors are so keen to take us down that slippery slope of chemical medication repair!

    So as we import more stuff are we fully assured of the ‘safety’ and benefits of the products.

    In sum there can be no simple retort on the complexities of Bajan food security as we are too small and there is no practical way to revert to self sufficient “… kitchen gardens [that] will flourish again…” . So Senor Are-We, most definitely “[a]griculture is likely to be an important engine of growth for a [long] time” just look at the type of subsidies every big country has for its agricultural and farming products.

    Bajan leaders are not all dumb so surely they get it too…

    …so yes we need to do more small gardening, get uu-used lands back under the plough and change our base level thinking re food production but as a a grand national policy a solid mix of food importation and use of scarse lands for more lucrative upscale revenue growth is still more ideal, seems to me.

    BTW @SS are you rewriting history with the remark “I think that we have already forgotten why the schools meals program was introduced first to Bridgetown and its suburbs. Hunger among those children whose parents did not have the room to grow even a bunch of seasoning.” SERIOUSLY.

    The lack of a lil yard to raise some stock was the reason for school meals startup back in the 60s…THAT principally…fah trute. Well I learned something else today.

  46. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    BARBADOS FOOD SECURITY…. sort of….possibly…maybe ?

    “The project, founded by prominent Barbadian investor, Sir Kyffin Simpson, who owns the Interamerica Trading Corporation that is responsible for the investment at Santa Fe, has seen the transformation of 29,000 acres of land that many had bypassed and called barren, now producing myriad crops, including rice for export to neighbouring Brazil.”

    https://www.stabroeknews.com/2017/news/guyana/07/10/santa-fe-farm-seeking-higher-ground-cattle-project/

  47. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    Are-we-there-yet
    June 26, 2018 1:10 PM

    AWTY…
    Re I’ve been scanning through many of your contributions to BU and I can’t see anything original in any of them, even your postings on the health challenges of the late DT.
    LOL man you better than me, cause I am not going to scan BU to see what you or any one else wrote….since your writings are not of any great import. LOL
    With respect to DT I correctly said that he had carcinoma of the pancreas. I didn’t mean to be original. I learned about that in Robbins and other texts of Pathology.
    Re Most of your postings are regurgitations from the Bible that need no particular brain power.
    It certainly does not need brain power to quote from the Bible, but not many can quote having rightly divided the Word of truth so that they can quote the texts in their contexts.
    Re The other posts are disruptive, combative statements that in general add nothing substantive to the debates.
    I do not come here to debate or add anything “substantive to the debates” I have stopped that. Can not see the point
    Certainly I cant debate with you from the nonsense you have scripted above, A MD should be able to diagnose carcinoma of the pancreas. And a man with a DMin should be able to quote Bible accurately. LOL
    Re. this particular topic of Food security, you have not added one iota of substance to the discussion
    I have not seen many who have added any iota of substance to the discussion either. Some like you have written at length, but you have not said anything.
    What is amusing is that you criticizing me for not adding anything, and I don’t care to get too involved, but here are you straining at gnats and swallowing camels in you great attempt to add all this substance to the debate, and all you are doing is writing nice prose , saying nothing and being a source of great mirth for me
    Re you seem to have strategically avoided disclosing your qualifications to teach Food Security,
    Why do I have to disclose my qualification to Teach Food Security in Nutrition classes?
    surely the degree in Medicine, which you consistently trumpet as evidence of your claimed super brainiac powers, cannot constitute such a qualification.
    Briiliant! How did you work that out. Now maybe you can work out that I am qualified some other how. I have not asked you to disclose your qualification to pontificate on Food Security, have I.
    Re What minor Food Security course did you actually teach and how were you qualified to teach it?
    I trolled on BU FOR TEN YEARS TO ENABLE ME TO TEACH A minor Food Security course. lol
    RE Let the BU family know
    I DON’T HAVE TO ANSWER TO THE “BU FAMILY”.
    WHY DON’T YOU LET ME HAVE MY FUN IN PEACE LIKKLE BIRD BRAIN?
    NO SIR WHEN I SAID “…..AWTY…..HAS NOT REALLY SAID ANYTHING, BECAUSE HE HAS A STERILE BRAIN, AND CANT PRODUCE ANYTHING ORIGINAL…..OR AT ALL”
    I MEANT AWTY…..HAS NOT REALLY SAID ANYTHING, BECAUSE HE HAS A STERILE BRAIN, AND CANT PRODUCE ANYTHING ORIGINAL…..OR AT ALL” LOL LOL LOL

    TIME FOR CRICKET

  48. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    Hants June 26, 2018 2:25 PM

    BARBADOS FOOD SECURITY…. sort of….possibly…maybe ?

    THERE ARE REPORTS AROUND THAT INDICATE THAT BARBADOD ACHIEVED FOOD SECURITY DURING WW2
    YES THAT WAS A DIFFERENT TIME AND PEOPLE WERE DIFFERENT

    NOW WE HAVE SOME WHO ARE SO DUMB THAT THEY DONT KNOW THAT DEBATES CAN BE COMBATIVE

  49. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    ATWY
    YOU GOOD AT SCANNING THRU BU
    SCAN AGAIN AND FIND WHERE I HAVE “CONSISTENTLY TRUMPETED THAT I HAVE CLAIMED MY DEGREE IN MEDICINE AS SUPER BRAINIAC POWERS”

  50. John Avatar
    John

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/farmers-are-killing-themselves-in-staggering-numbers/ar-AAzbcCN?ocid=spartandhp

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