VENDORS ARE?NOW?depending on imported vegetables because of a shortage of local produce.
That was the word from a crosssection of them when the SUNDAY SUN visited the Cheapside Market, Bridgetown yesterday.
The vendors said they believed the recent heavy rains caused the shortage resulting in their having to go to wholesalers for supplies of a wide variety of vegetables to satisfy their customers’ demand.
Angela Green said vegetables in demand were those that were scarce – cucumbers, carrots, cabbages, beans, sweet peppers, squash, broccoli and christophene.
“What vegetable is plentiful in Barbados? There isn’t any vegetable that plentiful, everything scarce. The rain has a lot to do with the vegetables spoiling and not making it off the farms,” said Green, pointing out that almost every vegetable on her tray was imported.
Galveston Burke said while he wanted to make
a profit to sustain his family financially, he also wanted the vegetables on his tray to be affordable for his buyers.
However, he stressed that the shortage had caused “cucumbers to jump from 50 cent per pound to $4 [and] sweet peppers from $5 per pound to $8”.
“The only two things you really getting right now in Barbados are pears and bananas. All the other vegetables coming from overseas.
“The rains falling every day and the food in the grounds can’t really get to the stage that they actually germinate.
“Right now, cabbage ain’t growing in Barbados because of the water. I went driving around for the last three days looking for peppers and I can’t find none. I got to buy foreign foods to sell to my consumers,” Burke explained.
Rennie Lyte, who is popular for the variety of thymes he sells, said he was finding difficulty sourcing the thymes which his customers wanted to “flavour the pot”.
“I still get a few thymes, parsley, marjoram, but farmers complaining that they not getting a lot of those items because of the rain. I am finding that in the past two weeks people have been doubling up on what they are buying,” said Lyte.
St Philip farmer Davanana Persaud, also a vendor in the market, said the heavy showers had been damaging his crops for the past two weeks.
“If I used to pick ten bags of cucumbers, I only picking three; if I used to pick two bags of okras, now I only picking half. But I didn’t buy any imported vegetables to sell; I sell local,” Persaud said.
