Jamaica's agri minister,Tufton, better start a serious campaign to turn JA into the food basket of the Caribbean. Furthermore, now that Haiti has been invited to become a part of CARICOM, they would be well advised to use their land resources to grow grain and other important agri products. I'd also look at crops like Yam, Dasheen and Breadfruit to serious alternatives to make flour. Even if only for local consumption as a means of insulating the cost of food w/n the country. By taking steps to exploit the carbohydrates stored in these locally grown foods, we can also seek to make our own animal feed. Talk is cheap, but at least people could conduct studies. Why do we have universities...I am sure the PSOJ would fund studies on the viability of some of this stuff. On the otherhand, I must confess that I don't know if such studies have already been done...I doubt it.
Relying on international imports is fool hardy when our dollar stands to de-value even more while the cost of $US traded food continues to climb. Additionally, the hidden cost of imports will become visible the sooner we realize that there is a huge oil premium on importing food due to transportation,preservation and packaging costs....the third world will be hardest hit.
