by Larry Smith
Year after year there are ringing calls for the Bahamas to invest more and do more to develop agriculture.
In 2001, former Central Bank researcher Gabriella Fraser observed that Bahamian agriculture had "hardly evolved" over time, and asked whether enough effort was being made to achieve food security.
Environmental advocate Sam Duncombe argued in a recent online exchange that If we don't invest in agriculture and manufacturing, Bahamians will be condemned to "a life of servitude and dependence."
Dr Marikis Alvarez of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation recently said agriculture could make a "huge contribution" to the Bahamian economy - if only we would inject enough funds into the sector to make it work.
Farmer's association president Keith Campbell says we need to focus on food security and "fully protect" Bahamian farmers from imports.
Lawyer, physician and sometime politician Dr Dexter Johnson insists we can feed ourselves - and produce a surplus for export.
Visioneer John Bostwick says that with better management we could easily achieve food self-sufficiency, and even replace oil imports with our own bio-energy crops.
BAIC chief Edison Key says agriculture could be "the catalyst for economic diversification" by substituting local products for $500 million of imported foodstuffs.
Meanwhile, the government's sector development plan argues that agriculture can be "repositioned as a strong pillar of the Bahamian economy".
And for anyone who remembers the "good old days" when granny and pa harvested fresh fruit and vegetables from their backyard, it is easy to believe that these projections can be fulfilled.
So how accurate is all this? Are we really missing out on a massive economic bonanza?
Well, Andros is usually cited as the "breadbasket" of the Bahamas - the big yard, the continent to the west, the home of BARTAD and BARC, the island with the greatest potential for farming.
But a recent economic impact study by Dr Venetia Hargreaves-Allen found that agriculture has a gross impact of only $1.23 million annually - about 1 per cent of the overall impact from all activities on Andros. In fact, farming had the lowest revenue per-person-employed out of all activities on the island. In other words, you can earn more from crabs than crops.
"From our work, it is clear that 60 per cent of the Androsian economy is linked directly to the island's natural resources - which is astonishing," Hargreaves-Allen said. "The long-term impact of depleting these resources will affect everyone's livelihood, so their future security needs to be addressed by protecting forests, reefs, creeks, crabs and bonefish."
And what is the current reality of farming in the Bahamas?
Agricultural production accounts for less than 2 per cent of the Bahamian economy, despite the fact that some 37,000 acres of cleared land has been earmarked for low-cost agricultural leases of up to 41 years - mostly on Andros, Abaco and Grand Bahama.
About a quarter of this land has been leased to farmers, but according to a 2009 government audit even those leases are mostly not in production.
The value of local crop production in 2007 was about $42 million, of which only a fraction was exported (mostly citrus). Meanwhile, imports of vegetables and fruit were valued at $46.4 million. Livestock production - poultry, pork, sheep and goats for local consumption - was valued at less than $20 million in 2007.
The Department of Agriculture received over $7 million in the current budget. This money goes to support a backyard farming programme, road and well construction for farmers, loan guarantees, and the provision of fertilizer, pesticides, packaging materials, livestock feed, fencing and technical services. Farmers are also subsidized by duty exemptions on supplies and equipment.
For the benefit of farmers, the Department operates the abbatoir, the Gladstone Road Agricultural Centre, the Produce Exchange, seven packing houses on four islands, a crop safety unit, and a plant propagation unit, as well as extension services. The Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation is a related agency that supports agricultural production and marketing throughout the islands with a separate budget.
However, by the Ministry's own account, agricultural policies have had minimal impact. Economies of scale are difficult to achieve, and most farmers cannot produce enough, consistently enough, to sustain direct sales to wholesalers and retailers.
"Grading standards, storage facilities and a strong infrastructure for delivering products to market (are) monumental challenges", according to the Department's 2009 Agricultural Sector Plan.
Other issues include poor crop management, record-keeping, and technology; reliance on immigrant labour; lack of financing, and inadequate market knowledge. Labour costs of a measly $150 per week are considered expensive by most farmers, the Department says.
Agricultural processing faces similar problems, as well as food safety and standardization issues and high energy and insurance costs.
In other words, despite decades of government support, commercial agriculture in the Bahamas is a difficult and uncompetitive enterprise that few Bahamians are interested in pursuing. And without Haitian labour, the sector would vanish overnight.
Food self-sufficiency for the Bahamas is an illusion. Ever since the failure of the loyalist plantations, large-scale agriculture has never worked here, despite brief exceptions such as the export trade in pineapples and sisal during the 19th century.
Bahamian conditions are simply not conducive to commercial agriculture. Pineapple fields for example, had to remain fallow for 15 to 20 years after producing only a few crops, and the industry was never large enough to justify a regular steamship run ((as the banana trade did in the West Indies and Central America).
Even subsistence agriculture is a problem in the Bahamas. Historians Michael Craton and Gail Saunders note that the predominant out island economy from emancipation to the 20th century was a shifting form of peasant farming.
"The practices of rotational slash and burn agriculture and the overcropping of the meagre surface vegetation by livestock hastened the process whereby the land became insufficient even for a steady population," they wrote in Islanders in the Stream. "At best it was a triumph of necessity against the most unfavourable conditions - poor soil, harsh climate, natural disasters, animal pests."
Bahamian soils are dry, thin and patchy - making them suitable only for traditional shifting cultivation or pothole farming, experts say. Mechanised agriculture is restricted by frequent outcrops of bare rock. Water resources are scarce, and crops require heavy irrigation.
To pursue commercial farming the ground must be specially prepared by heavy machinery at great cost, and large amounts of chemical inputs are required, which can and do pollute the water table.
More obviously, food security is an illusion because the necessary inputs for commercial farming themselves must be imported - fertilizer, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides.
As former agricultural officer John Hedden wrote recently, "Environmental pollution is guaranteed. And still no security or self sufficiency. Suppose the boat with the fertiliser stops coming? Or the plane with the seeds? Or the ship with the tractor and pump on board?"
Other countries in the region (like Mexico or the Dominican Republic) can produce vastly cheaper product than is posible in the Bahamas. And government guarantees and purchases only act as a disincentive to efficient producers. Import restrictions limit consumer choice and result in higher food prices.
"Clearly, there is no proven formula for success in agriculture in the Bahamas," writes geographer Neil Sealey. "The key is understanding the limitations and taking advantage of the opportunities. Production close to a market which can provide fresh produce of good quality clearly has a market advantage."
Lucayan Tropical and Goodfellow Farms on New Providence, and Lightbourne Farms on Abaco, are good examples - relying on hydroponic cultivation to one degree or another. They practice a form of market gardening, and in the case of Goodfellow's (near the airport) the addition of a restaurant and farm shop have created a successful boutique destination.
So it is counterfactual to suggest that agriculture can provide the large-scale economic returns that the country requires to develop. Small farming operations focusing on tourism may work, but as John Hedden put it:
"Agriculture in the Bahamas has never been a long-term profitable business. So we all went sponging. And we still do, but these days we sponge off the mainly North American tourists."
Instead of wasting time, effort and resources on what can only be a niche activity at best, we should recognize and protect the immense value stored in our natural environment and cultural heritage, and leverage that value through carefully planned, low-impact tourism.
What I don't understand is if all these people think it's possible to feed ourselves, why don't they prove it by investing in a successful farming enterprise so we can see how it's done?
I hope you don't mind me posting these links to John Hedden's excellent 7 part series on Agriculture for your readers:
http://www.weblogbahamas.com/blog_bahamas/2011/09/bahamian-agriculture-part-1.html
http://www.weblogbahamas.com/blog_bahamas/2011/09/bahamian-agriculture-an-overview-part-2.html
http://www.weblogbahamas.com/blog_bahamas/2011/10/bahamian-agriculture-and-overview-part-3.html
http://www.weblogbahamas.com/blog_bahamas/2011/10/bahamian-agriculture-an-overview-part-4.html
http://www.weblogbahamas.com/blog_bahamas/2011/10/bahamian-agriculture-an-overview-part-5.html
http://www.weblogbahamas.com/blog_bahamas/2011/10/bahamian-agriculture-an-overview-part-6.html
http://www.weblogbahamas.com/blog_bahamas/2011/11/bahamian-agriculture-an-overview-part-7.html
Posted by: Rick Lowe | November 01, 2011 at 08:08 PM
What we can do is invest in the agriculture sector in Haiti and import our fruits and vegetables from our neighbor in the south. It has a two-fold effect,we can finally get a return on our investment and secondly, it will result in one less person trying to move to The Bahamas.
Posted by: Eddie | November 02, 2011 at 08:34 AM
I read your column with interest since you covered most of the agricultural 'thinking' people of today in the Bahamas.
I was amazed to read the low returns from Andros, since I believe it is the breadbasket of the Bahamas, and should be really pushed into professional horticultural production.
A very long time ago I proposed that a block of 500 acres minimum should be organised into a cooperative of ten Bahamian farmers, each owning 50 acres.
My reason for this size is two-fold. Firstly, the then Prime Minister had been told by the UK Government that they did not think one farmer could handle more than 50 acres, and secondly to become fully mechanised the minimum land needed would be 500 acres.
Thus a cooperative managed by a "professional horticulturalist" with all the necessary equipment to grow vegetables in the most modern techniques could produce an incredible amount of food for the Bahamas.
Agriculture is a seven-day job, and with only limited amount of labour needed, because of the machinery available, it could well be of interest to the farmers who own the land, and when they are all needed, plus others, for harvesting, they could all be available.
The produce could be brought FRESH into Nassau by boat, and should compete against produce that is being produced in another Country, due to the mechanisation.
Unfortunately, the small island farmers would have to up their game, or choose crops that are more profitable, since they are too small to compete against a large modern farm. However, they would still be able to use the present subsidised system to sell their produce.
Some time ago I visited Homestead in Florida and they basically have the same soil (!!) as we do, but their management of the ground is highly professional and with irrigation and fertilisers and plastics they can produce incredible amounts of product.
Andros has this land and people have created big farming there before, so why cannot the Government put a big effort into the agricultural economy and get it started?
To answer your question about agriculture, YES, it is most important for the future if we are to survive another calamity like 9-11, with only three days produce in the shops, I heard.
Agriculture in most of the world runs on a rotational five-year system to keep the well being of the land useful, but here we do not seem to have a rotation except leaving land fallow, which is non-productive land.
Maybe the powers that be can help with this one, since I know several of the agricultural experts that you talked about, and maybe they could get together and refurbish the agricultural system here.
All I know is that Bahamians and foreigners have run large farms in the past successfully, and I believe the only problem to doing it again is lack of funding and farmers cooperating together.
Lastly the modern home hydroponics is fairly easy to follow, and grow home vegetables, and anybody who went to Epcot in the olden days, as I did, could not help to be impressed by their cultivation in that department. Any household can produce, with a little effort and it educates our young people as well.
We have to grow our own food at competitive prices here in the Bahamas, and the only way is to go big enough and become fully mechanised as well.
Put the numbers together on a 500-acre productive horticultural farm and see what we can save from imports alone..
Posted by: Nicholas Cripps | November 03, 2011 at 06:19 PM
Thanks for your comments.
The point of my article was not that farming could never be successful here, but that the constant calls for massive investment in agriculture and the belief that we can achieve food security through such investment are not rooted in reality.
I believe the suggestions you made about Andros were tried with BARTAD and, as with most things in the Bahamas, implementation was a big problem - due to politics, favouritsm, and poor management. See my 2008 article on this...
http://www.bahamapundit.com/2008/05/food-self-suffi.html
In 2010 I wrote about the prospect of large-scale Chinese investment in farming on Abaco that further discussed these issues...
http://www.bahamapundit.com/2010/04/chinese-farming-investment-on-abaco.html
Backyard farming and market gardening seem feasible, but large-scale commercial farming doesn't make sense when you consider the alternatives. And in my view it is a misuse of our natural resources.
Posted by: larry smith | November 03, 2011 at 06:29 PM