The peo­ple of the Caribbean have large­ly for­got­ten the art of farm­ing, and it is im­per­a­tive that we re­learn the skill.

This was a com­mon lament among Cari­com’s lead­ers at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Agri In­vest­ment Fo­rum and Ex­po II at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts on Fri­day.

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley raised the con­cern dur­ing her speech at The Lord Kitch­en­er Au­di­to­ri­um, not­ing that as the re­gion em­barks on a dri­ve to in­crease food pro­duc­tion and re­duce the over­all food im­port bill, large-scale train­ing will be re­quired.

“We have to ad­mit, re­gret­tably, that many of our peo­ple have lost the art of farm­ing and lost the knowl­edge and there­fore the piv­otal role of those videos as well with the sup­port of the ex­ten­sion ser­vices in our Min­istries of Agri­cul­ture will be­come crit­i­cal,” said Mot­t­ley.

She said it was cru­cial for the peo­ple of the Caribbean to re-learn how to grow their own food not sim­ply to achieve Cari­com’s 25 by 25 goal, but to al­so ad­dress grow­ing health con­cerns due to the con­sump­tion of un­healthy meals.

“Food and wa­ter are the new oil, let us get to the task to en­sure that all of our peo­ple not on­ly ben­e­fit from it in terms of their health, but al­so in terms of their pock­ets,” said Mot­t­ley.

“We have to do it not on­ly be­cause of the eco­nom­ic re­quire­ments but be­cause of the health re­quire­ments. The re­al­i­ty is that every ma­jor health site will tell you about the ap­pro­pri­ate use of low glycemic foods. Most of that we grow here but our young­sters eat mac­a­roni pie and fries. We’ve got to change that,” the Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter lament­ed, “It’s not good enough for us to make speech­es about colo­nial­ism in su­per­mar­kets, if we’re not pre­pared to change peo­ple’s ac­cess to the food.”

The dis­si­pa­tion of home-grown crops was al­so ac­knowl­edged by Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley, who said the tra­di­tion of grow­ing food in back yards and rear­ing an­i­mals, dwin­dled from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion.

“When I grew up in To­ba­go every house­hold had yard fowls most neigh­bours had a pig or a sheep or a goat in the back­yard and every­body had a patch of some­thing grow­ing some­where,” said the Prime Min­is­ter, who fur­ther ex­plained that as time went on the art of grow­ing crops at home was large­ly lost.

“The most im­por­tant chal­lenge that we have is who go­ing to do this farm­ing be­cause a lot of the peo­ple who farmed when we were farm­ing and were self-suf­fi­cient are no longer with us. We are their grand­chil­dren or their great-grand­chil­dren. They have not been re­placed and that is why the youth pro­gramme is so im­por­tant. That we are in­tro­duc­ing our young peo­ple to an en­deav­our, to a busi­ness that is not on­ly lu­cra­tive if it is well done, but it can save us from star­va­tion is hap­pen­ing,” he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter called on the re­gion’s uni­ver­si­ties to play their part in this much need train­ing that was need­ed across the re­gion.

“We have gone past the stage where the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guyana, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go are lux­u­ries and ivory tow­ers. They need to get in­volved in help­ing us solve these prob­lems, train­ing our young peo­ple,” said the Prime Min­is­ter.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley greets Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley at the Agri Investment Forum and Expo 11 at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

The role of these in­sti­tu­tions were al­so high­light­ed as the nu­tri­tion­al val­ue of sev­er­al well known Caribbean meals was ques­tioned by the Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter. She said these facts need­ed to be known not on­ly as we at­tempt­ed to re­duce to food im­port bill and but in at­tempts to ex­port.

“I met with a sweet drink man­u­fac­tur­er about a month ago. One of the pre­mi­um ones, it’s not my busi­ness to pro­mote. But one of the things that they in­di­cat­ed is that it is a cry­ing shame that there is no Caribbean calo­rie counter, how much calo­ries in the roti that you want to serve me lat­er Kei­th?

How much calo­ries in the bread­fruit, how much calo­ries in all of the Caribbean foods that we eat in the corn soup in the oil down,” said Mot­t­ley who al­so ex­plained this knowl­edge was cru­cial if we sought to ad­dress grow­ing health con­cerns around the re­gion.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley felt this was al­so an area that could be ad­dressed in the re­gion’s ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion fa­cil­i­ties.

“But of course, if we don’t get the help from the uni­ver­si­ties and oth­ers in shap­ing and re­shap­ing our di­et, and my col­league my friend, Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley talked about the calo­ries. Young peo­ple are fash­ion­able, look­ing af­ter their bod­ies and they need to know how much calo­ries they’re tak­ing in, how much they’re burn­ing and so on, and what the food they eat will do to them and so on. And al­so need to know that we have sud­den­ly dis­cov­ered that cas­sa­va and sweet pota­to are mir­a­cle foods,” said the Prime Min­is­ter who lament­ed that many of the foods that had been typ­i­cal in lo­cal house­holds long ago are on­ly now be­ing recog­nised for its ben­e­fit.

“But be­cause our young peo­ple have been dis­con­nect­ed from their grand­par­ents, much of what we did, has been lost cul­tur­al­ly.

Some­body has to be­gin to teach them back how to cook lo­cal foods. You give many of our peo­ple a bread fruit they don’t know what to do with it. But that too is a mir­a­cle food,” he said.

These lessons he said al­so need­ed to be taught as they could be cru­cial to both health and the econ­o­my of the Caribbean.

“The ef­fort that we are go­ing to make is not on­ly about ask­ing you to spend mon­ey in the lead­ing edge tech­nol­o­gy at the fac­to­ry, but we have to spend some time and some re­sources in the head. Teach­ing what we have lost. We took those things for grant­ed. We got to make them fash­ion­able again. In the con­text of eat what you grow, grow what you eat. And if you do that, you can in­su­late your­self from a world that is harsh, un­friend­ly, and usu­al­ly quite dis­re­spect­ful of peo­ple like us,” he said.

Mot­t­ley said in many cas­es, in­ter­na­tion­al coun­tries had al­ready start­ed us­ing these foods in their prod­ucts.

‘From sweet pota­to chips to bread­fruit chips to all oth­er kinds of chips. I want us to work with Caribbean peo­ple to change that, “Mot­t­ley said.