Jamaica is a small island with ‘limited’ resources, both natural and financial. We are a nation which has been historically colonised and had whatever wealth we did have (produced by slave labour) forcibly extracted and sent first to Spain but then to the UK. Post-independence we have switched the UK and her empire for the Washington consensus and we now find ourselves almost 60 years free under the yoke of neo-colonialism, a balance of trade deficit which is unbearably high, non-existent production, devoid of true foreign policies and woefully unable to feed ourselves.
During our long history since Spanish conquest, we have always been a monoculture, first a Spanish way station providing beef and tallow to ships, then a British sugar plantation after they took over, a banana plantation followed during the early 1900s when US power in the region became undeniable, and finally post-independence we have become a tourist plantation… I’m sorry, destination.
During all this time, except probably when the Spanish held Jamaica as nothing more than a way station, Jamaica has never been able to feed itself, always dependent, ever since British takeover, on foodstuffs from either Europe or North America. This started off initially because as a sugar colony every inch of land was needed for sugar production, land waiting to be used later or which had already been exhausted, or used for housing of slaves. No space left for food production and the meagre plots afforded to the slaves was never enough so importation of food, first from the 13 colonies then Canada after the revolution and the US again, has been the go-to.
With the import of food amounting to 15 per cent of our import bill, with the world rapidly changing in terms of international relations and how it is ordered, with pandemics showing the fragility of supply chain links and with an economy which is on the verge of tanking, bold decisions are needed. One such decision is to go hard with agriculture and make it a backbone in our economy.
jamaicachange 