Produce more here - Economist wants country to learn to feed itself

JAMAICA'S HIGH food-import bill is one of the biggest threats to the development of the nation, economist Dennis Morrison said at the Rotary Club of St Andrew's weekly luncheon at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel, New Kingston, yesterday.

Morrison said the reason for the country's approximate US$1-billion annual food-import bill is its dependency on imported food. He pointed to research which measured imported food during the 1950s to be 10 per cent of all the food consumed in Jamaica. Morrison said approximately 60 per cent of food now consumed in Jamaica is imported.

costly bill

This bill, he said, was "nearly as much as the combined net earnings from two of three of our largest sources of foreign exchange, which are tourism and bauxite."

He added: "After we have paid the bill for imported food, we have far less of the foreign exchange we earn available for the other critical items that we must import to function. This is the reason we have to borrow to cover the deficit in our balancing payments."

The economist lamented the high import bills amid what he said was the abundance of idle parcels of land in the country.

"Back in the early days, every available land was being cultivated; now, the stark difference is idle lands more than cultivated lands. Both the country's domestic and export crop production have declined in absolute terms since the 1970s," said Morrison.

world situation changing

He said it was critical for the country to grasp the importance of the ability to feed itself and rely less on imported food.

"The reasons are staring us in the face. The world situation, with respect to food, is going to change radically in coming years, confirmed by both the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. We saw it in 2007, 2008, and we are seeing it again. We were warned," he said.

He added: "We have to plan to produce more here to be able to have some measure of self-sufficiency if we are going to be confident in the future in the ability of the Jamaican state to survive and for the standard of living among our people to improve."