On a recent Brass Tacks programme, Tony Wiggins and Peter Wickham were discussing what they would do if they had an acre of agricultural land at Bennetts Plantation. Both would put theirs into tourism.
Wiggins stressed the importance of earning foreign exchange. Many of the items craved by sundry Bajans like G-string panties, cellphones, tractors, Horlicks, Vaseline, white people medicines, young Jamaican girls to “dance” in adult night clubs, G-string panties . . . are imported and have to be paid for with foreign exchange.
The suppliers won’t take our money, not even the new play-play version.
An acre of tourism will earn more foreign exchange than an acre of farming so that’s what we should do. QED. End of story.
But is it? Are we farmers wasting precious resources? Or are the gentlemen giving only half the picture?
Foreign exchange is an in and out process. An acre of sugar, rum, yams, tamarinds, pepper sauce, ginger lilies or cotton (our export farm items) won’t gross anything like an acre of Pavarotti or golf.
But from my acre at Bennetts I could possibly reap in less than a year (figures supplied by my beloved, if won’t-let-me, sister-in-law Frances Chandler) 10 000 lbs of pumpkins, 10 000 lbs eddoes, 3 000 lbs pigeon peas, 10 000 lbs okras, up to 70 000 lbs onions, 25 000 lbs cucumbers, 12 000 lbs yams, 25 000 lbs sweet potatoes, 12 000 lbs beet, 15 000 lbs carrots, 8 000 lbs corn, 20 000 lbs watermelons, 15 000 lbs hot peppers or 10 000 lbs cassava.
Lord, have mercy! Think of the Bajan families I could provide with healthy, certified clean, wholesome food! What a dent every Bajan acre of farmland could put in the $700 million food import bill! As Sir Courtney said recently, grow food!
We need to touch on that aspect. We have strict controls on the pesticides used in Barbados. Pesticides banned in Barbados are allowed in some countries (including the United States last time I checked). And different countries have different standards of allowable pesticide residue (read, poison) in food crops. The Europeans are far stricter than the Americans.
A senior vet told me sometime back he was appalled at the conditions under which meat products were processed in a Caribbean country from whom we import.
Wiggins would take his tourism-earned foreign exchange and import food. If it contributed to the rampant chronic diseases now haunting us, who knows, he might have enough left over to build two more hospitals.
But the foreign exchange story doesn’t end there. Which is why sugar would still be in my rotation. For years I have admired the efforts of young Lennox Ward and his mother at Portland. Lennox is my type of manager, toiling alongside his workers with fork and hoe.
Sugar kept Portland looking like heaven next to the plantations around. We often forget that. The boargunvilliers and petruniers outside an insurance office don’t bring in any income. But they bring in customers, especially if the next door competitor’s front yard looks like the local metal dump. Just like sugar brings in tourists. Let’s pray Portland doesn’t go to bush.
More importantly, sugar is king when it comes to retained foreign exchange earning. The money from sugar stays here. And we can sell every pound of sugar we produce.
Tourism can’t say so. Sometimes we even use foreign exchange to “pay” tourists to come here.
Not to mention other negative aspects.
In our water-scarce island, my towel gets washed every three months. A tourist may want a clean one every day. And while my wife does her “cat-scratch” in a cold shower, he may use a tub full.
And don’t talk about golf. I have got ten times more sporting pleasure on an eight-by-four plywood sheet in our tent. Golf needs a whole plantation.
Last thing. Tourism is fickle. Tourists don’t have to come or buy. Reports of a British couple robbed here made adverse news worldwide.
Wick and Wigg should check some prime sugar estates turned into luxury villas for tourists. Sad news. They ain’t selling. Check Bennetts from Arch Hall going South. A grass piece. The white people aren’t building downwind of a landfill.
The two Ws mightn’t earn a pang from their acre. Me, I sitting pretty.
Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator.
