‘We don’t have to produce everything’ – Natalio D. Wheatley
He was speaking while a panelist on his party’s PEP Radio, a once a month radio talk show, which was aired on Monday evening March 23, 2015 on ZBVI 780 AM.
“I think that we have to move away from this idea that if we don’t do everything we can’t do anything; if we’re not producing all our food we can’t produce any of it,” he said.
He made the point that there is land enough for agriculture and that short term leases with land owners could be worked out.
“People talk about availability of land but there are a lot of land that can be available for farming right now if we establish [a programme of short term leases]. We should just go as far as the available resources can take us as opposed to setting our sights so high that we become discouraged if we can’t meet those [goals]. Let’s see what is available and then let’s see what we could do and then put our heel to the plough so to speak,” said Wheatley.
He said if land is made available for persons to farm then it might be important to have a mechanism to measure the progress being made on the land. “For instance you don’t want to grant somebody some land and the land is there lying dormant and you don’t see the type of production that you need to see and that person is just holding up that land when maybe somebody else could make better use of the land,” said Wheatley.
'Greenhouses not enough'
Speaking on the issue, Chairman of the PEP Honourable J. Alvin Christopher (R2) said, “If we can’t produce 100 percent it doesn’t mean we cannot produce 25 percent of our food. The greenhouses that we have they could only produce certain types of crops and if they are well utilised and that technology functions the way it should function, the crops that those greenhouse can produce, I don’t think that our population can consume [all of them].”
Wheatley added that there are people who, from a philosophical standpoint, only want to consume locally grown foods since there will be some amount of greenhouse emissions to bring imported foods into the territory. He said such persons seek to buy locally produced foods.
Recently Government has been criticised for their handling of the agriculture sector, which persons feel is on the decline as evidenced by the poor participation in this year’s Farmer’s Week activities and the scant regard paid to local farmers whose livelihoods remain threatened due to the proliferation of imported produce.
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