The Tribune

WHAT could The Bahamas do with an extra billion dollars a year – build two new hospitals? Upgrade schools and fund after-school programmes? Pay down the national debt, boost social services to better serve the elderly and disabled?

A billion dollars or more – that’s what we are told that we dish out annually in food imports with the main beneficiary being the US.

We are so accustomed to importing what we eat we take it for granted that the cheese in the food store has a foreign label, the meat was shipped in, the milk and orange juice and melons come from Florida or California or Mexico. We accept the fact that fast-food restaurants pack carefully curated burgers, fries, tenders and tacos provided and monitored by their franchiser.

We boast about Bahamian fare. Yet how much of that Bahamian fare is actually Bahamian if 90 percent of all the food we consume is imported?

Is it the recipe that is Bahamian while the food is not? If chicken is unofficially called the national bird, how much of that chicken is bred, raised and slaughtered in The Bahamas?

It is not all doom and gloom, there is good news when it comes to taking a bite at that food import bill. Thanks to recent efforts by the Ministry of Agriculture & Marine Resources, BAMSI and the Agricultural Development Organization (ADO), we are moving in the right direction. More of us are dabbling in backyard farming, more schools and communities are engaged in planting. There’s even a gradual uptick in commercial farming.

While we inch slowly getting back to doing what came naturally to our forebearers - growing what we eat and eating what we grow - a sole farmer is urging us to go further, faster. His may be a voice in the hinterlands but it’s one of hope. He believes The Bahamas can feed itself and if anyone knows what it takes to farm, to live through storms, to plant and re-plant and pray and harvest, it’s Nick Maioulis.

Founder of Abaco Neem, Maioulis has been tilling the soil, planting trees, cultivating everything from bees to greens, seeds to coconuts and neem in all its uses for more than 34 years. That’s longer than over half of the population of The Bahamas has been alive. Maioulis and his wife, Daphne DeGregory Maioulis, live very simply on the 120 acres they lease from government on Ernestine Highway in Abaco. Through constant vigilance of soil and water, they run the only certified organic farm in The Bahamas.

“We CAN feed ourselves in this country,” insists Nick, worrying the red bandana that by end of another hot day in the field has paid the price for keeping the sun off his neck while he was running the tractor or hauling water. There are more than 120 varieties of tropical fruit trees and shrubs on the farm in addition to the neem that is ground, pounded, churned and turned into teas, soaps, oils and more.

Farmer Nick is not alone in believing that The Bahamas can up its game in growing while lowering its expenditure for imports. Think about this statement by ADO’s executive chairman Philip Smith who after 17 years of feeding the needy turned his energy and attention to agriculture.

“There will always be a need to feed but with a billion dollars a year food import bill and with so many processed foods contributing to the poor health of the population, we must focus on a return to farming as an honest and honourable way of life and to backyard and community farming as a means to grow what we eat,” Smith said.

Smith and Farmer Nick are probably both right in thinking we can and we need to feed ourselves, but whether we are willing to give up the brands we have learned to look for is another story. Still, the thought of some part of a billion dollars a year staying in The Bahamas and a population that is healthier is surely an idea worth digesting.

50/50 is more than fair – there’s treasure in the deep turquoise sea of The Bahamas

There’s a misnomer that the Bahamas Senate is for the nearly dead and newly bred but whoever coined that must not have been watching Senate proceedings lately. In the Senate on Friday, July 28, the discourse was not only reassuring, it changed policy for good for the Bahamian people.

Chief among the matters was legislation affecting the percentage Bahamians and treasure hunters would get from the goods and gold in what was called the undersea culture of The Bahamas. For decades, the spoils have gone to the hunters, 75 percent to the finder and 25 percent to The Bahamas. It was a kind of adult finders’ keepers, losers’ weeper trade-off. But with the passage of new legislation, it’s 50-50, half for those who go to the deep pocket expense of exploration and half for the country in which the exploration took place.

We may never know how much ‘undersea culture’ lies on reefs and in the sparkling deep turquoise and emerald waters of a nation of islands scattered throughout 100,000 square miles of open ocean. We may never fully recover the unintended deposits of ships that wrecked on reefs or were victims of storms, rogue waves, mutiny or mayhem in the days of sea transport of rich cargo and fabled dreams. But with the revised split between those who seek the buried treasure and those whose watery backyard it was buried in, The Bahamas stands a bit taller, prouder and richer, thanks in part to the Senate that sealed the deal after the AG’s office drafted the legislation and MPs passed it. As small as the Senate contingent was, every contribution mattered and under the leadership of Sen. Michael Halkitis, we achieved an equitable result. Rarely do I dabble in anything to do with politics and never do I take partisan sides but watching the proceedings live inured a renewed sense of the relevance of the Bahamas Senate, the history Senators brought to the matters before them and the impressive combination of passion and restraint they displayed.