REGINA – American trade aggression has sideswiped Caribbean family farms, says a visitor from the Windward Islands.
Cheryl Johnson, who has been learning and teaching this fall while on a project in the Prairies with the National Farmers Union, attended a recent Saskatchewan farm women’s conference.
In an interview, she said the United States has won a complaint it took to the World Trade Organization about British subsidies for Caribbean bananas. Johnson said on the islands of St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica and Grenada, bananas have been grown for 40 years on small plots by families with financial help from Britain. Their crop competes with Central American plantation bananas grown for U.S.-based companies like Dole and Chiquita.
Read Also
Going beyond “Resistant” on crop seed labels
Variety resistance is getting more specific on crop disease pathogens, but that information must be conveyed in a way that actually helps producers make rotation decisions.
Johnson said the island farmers don’t get much help from their governments, which tend to focus on tourism. Bananas are 16 percent of the islands’ gross domestic product but families will have to switch crops overnight.
Another crippling situation is infestation of pink mealy bug that have attacked the market gardens, which are run mainly by women. They have been unable to sell staples such as yams, pumpkins, carrots and grapefruits.
“In Grenada, the loss of $30 million in agriculture is devastating to one little country.”
Johnson said the Caribbean has seen much of its “progressive work” done by nongovernmental agencies. Yet these organizations are losing their foreign funding to other areas like Yugoslavia and Russia. She said foreign countries see the big cars used by the tourist trade and assume the island economies are strong.”They don’t look at the working man’s plate.”
