Foreign foods dominate Jamaica fare

Launched in 2003 under the auspices of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), the ongoing ‘Grow What We Eat, Eat What We Grow’ campaign has done very little to dent the preference of Jamaicans for foreign foods. In fact, the continued dominance of foreign foods in Jamaican diets was a worrying topic during Monday’s annual general meeting of the Kingston and St Andrew Association of Branch Societies of the JAS, at the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions offices at 1A Hope Boulevard, St Andrew.

Acting Executive Director of the Jamaica 4-H Clubs Garfield Ewart first brought the issue to the fore. “The unfortunate thing is that sometimes when we eat; it is not what we here produce. It is something that other farmers elsewhere in far countries produce. We cannot continue to depend on those persons to produce for us all the time,” Ewart told his audience.

He noted that there are certain crops which may not be economically practical for Jamaican farmers to produce. “But there are other crops that we can produce here that we are still not doing it,” the Jamaica 4-H executive lamented.

He was supported by lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Dr K’adamawe K’nIfe, who argued that agriculture must form the foundation of any sustainable national health strategy.

“We live in a country where imported bad food kills more people than gunshot. If you look pon the kind of lifestyle illnesses that the people them have, it don’t come from Jamaican food. It come from the food that we import.”

He continued: “Computer cannot feed people, is food.” He told the farmers that given the important role they play in providing food for people to eat each day, they were the de facto essential service providers.

K’nIfe then reminded his audience that the first two of the 17 sustainable development goals adopted by the United Nations Development Programme related to hunger and poverty.

Goal number 1 – No Poverty, states that; Eradicating hunger in all its forms remains one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. While the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped by more than half between 1990 and 2015, too many are still struggling for the most basic needs.

Meanwhile the number 2 goal of zero poverty is still a far way from being achieved, as it notes:

The number of undernourished people has dropped by almost half in the past two decades because of rapid economic growth and increase agricultural productivity. Many developing countries that used to suffer from famine and hunger can now meet their nutritional needs. Central and East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean have all made progress in eradicating extreme hunger.

Unfortunately, extreme hunger and malnutrition remain a huge barrier to development in many countries.