The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian pineapple farmer yesterday warned that the Governments ambitions to revive this agricultural niche will "not be as simple as just throwing $2.5m at it".

Stephen Wrinkle, whose family grows around 20,000-25,000 plants on Eleuthera, told Tribune Business that the promised financing is "great but certainly not everything in agriculture" as he warned it needs to be accompanied by training and investment in supporting facilities such as testing laboratories.

Speaking ahead of Thursday's town meeting in Governor's Harbour, which the Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Resources hopes will provide a springboard to resuscitate pineapple farming and attract young people to invest in the sector, he backed the Government's objectives but argued that achieving them will achieve more than just providing money.

"A lot of this is lack of knowledge at the local level," Mr Wrinkle told this newspaper. "We don't have the expertise here to do these things. We don't have a laboratory here to do soil analysis and tissue samples. It's a fact. We don't have the laboratory facilities here with the expertise attached to that to improve the harvest we're now getting...

"You go down to Potter's Cay and look at the typical crops that come in, and very few of the collection you see in the food stores. This presents a problem for marketing. These are frustrating obstacles that must be overcome in we are to be successful in the agriculture industry here. So far we have not been able to provide enough people that are specialised in this field to get over it. It's a tough nut to crack.

"Anything they [the Government] can do to help agriculture and get young people to be interested and successful in this industry is going to of benefit to the country. No doubt about it. We fell away from agriculture a century ago. We have three to four generations growing up without farming. Now we have to resuscitate this. There's a lot of obstacles to overcome."

The Government has placed renewed emphasis on growing Bahamian agriculture, and expanding it from the grassroots up via initiatives such as backyard farming, to ensure this nation produces more of what it consumes. This is designed to boost food security in the COVID-19 pandemic's wake, as well as combat high prices and inflation on food imports by replacing them with cheaper domestic produce.

The Bahamas, though, has a long way to go in achieving such objectives with the Government starting out by targeting niches it believes Bahamian farmers can compete in - first eggs, and now pineapples. The Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Resources, in a statement, said it plans to design a three-year project that will revive pineapple farming on Eleuthera via a $2.5m investment.

This is intended to help develop a small pineapple export sector. Jomo Campbell, minster of agriculture and marine resources, said: “We are excited that this project will come into fruition and enhance the country’s exports and economic opportunities for the island of Eleuthera.

"We note that there are 15 active pineapple farmers but many of them are over the age of 55 years-old. We are hoping that this project will be sustainable, modernise the industry, draw younger farmers and reduce our pineapple imports by at least 10 percent. It is hoped that the Government will establish a partnership with pineapple farmers to grow this industry exponentially.”

The ministry's statement said the goal is to develop "a processing facility under a contract farming system", noting that Eleuthera's pineapple farmers at present produce on average about 10,000 to 15,000 pineapples per acre.

This Thursday's Town Meeting, set for 5.30pm at Workers House in Governor's Harbour, will explore ways to increase pineapple production with officials from Costa Rica, the largest producer of pineapples in the world, set to attend and discuss a new variety of product.

Mr Wrinkle, who said he and his family have just finished planting their crop, promised to "support it any way we can" and "we certainly hope it is successful". However, he warned that agriculture is labour intensive, and added: "One of our problems is we haven't trained enough Bahamians in agriculture. Maybe we should send some people down to Costa Rica for a year. It would be a good investment.

"We have to educate the people in the industry to be successful. Throwing money at it is great; it's part of it, but is certainly not everything. In agriculture you can't fake it. You either have a successful harvest or fail and can't take it to market."

Mr Wrinkle added that "other avenues have to be addressed in the financing package", including the inability of Bahamian farmers to obtain insurance for their crops, which in turn blocks them from accessing bank loans and other forms of credit.

He also pointed out that The Bahamas' archipelagic geography makes moving crops, and getting them to market, more costly and difficult than in other nations with produce having to be shipped from the Family Islands to Nassau once it is grown, harvested and packaged.

"It's not easy. It's very involved, the logistics" Mr Wrinkle said. "I applaud the Government for doing this, and hope we will see some benefits, but it's not as simple as throwing $2.5m at it. We'll see how it goes."

The Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Resources, in its statement, said the town meeting will also seek to obtain farmer feedback so it can make better decisions. Shacara Lightbourne, the project consultant, said: “In order to revitalise the industry we need to do some baseline studies and get some information on the profiles of the farmers - their ages, locations, types of fertilizers they use and the varieties they use.

"We want to make preliminary recommendations on how they can improve their production. We will share some of our preliminary findings during the week based on our field notes. Based on this, we will design the project on the pineapple industry.”