As I sit in the covered dining area of McGill University’s Bellairs Research Institute in Holetown, Barbados, listening to the crickets sing their song and smelling the air dripping with humidity and anticipation of the nightly rainfall, I am struck again by how priviledged I have been this summer.  I am in week 11 of a 14-week summer studies and research semester down in Barbados and have been honoured to have my research project funded by the AUCC Students for Development Award. Over the past two months I have become increasingly acclimatized to Barbadian culture and come to have an appreciation for its wonderful people. All of the awkwardness has worn off and now I am so used to the reggae and SOCA music blaring from the buses, the roundabouts, the driving on the left hand side of the street, the interminable heat and humidity and the banes of mosquitoes and sunburns, that it is hard to imagine life being any other way.

I arrived in sunny, humid Barbados on May 24^th, ready for my full-time internship with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA) and a few McGill field studies courses to be taken concurrently as a part of the McGill Barbados Interdisciplinary Tropical Studies (BITS) field semester. My research project for this summer has been on the promotion of home gardens in Barbados through the creation of educational materials and a feasibility study documenting the economic benefits of domestic food production. The goal of home food production is multi-pronged: to alleviate poverty-related food stress, to decrease food and financial insecurity (food, especially fresh produce, is extremely expensive in Barbados) and to prevent and manage non-communicable chronic diseases (NCCDs) like excess weight, obesity and diabetes in Barbados (the country is the diabetes amputation capital of the World). My contribution this summer will not have solved all of these problems in the short term but my research is part of a larger, long-term picture.

Let me explain a bit more about the situation in Barbados. The island of Barbados is the easternmost island in the Lesser Antilles and has a long colonial and trade history with Great Britain, especially in the production and export of sugar and rum. In the mid-20^th century when the country gained its independence and with changing tariffs and quotas to Europe, it, like many other countries in the Caribbean, begun a major shift to tourism as the major economic activity. From the 1970s onwards, tourism became the dominant economic sector of the country and this has had many impacts on the country ranging from competition with the agricultural sector for land use and employment, to increasing imports of food to support the needs and tastes of incoming tourists. Over the years as agriculture in the country has steadily declined, Barbados has become increasingly dependent on food imports such that 7/8 of its food comes from abroad. This has resulted in soaring food prices and an ever-changing local diet (increased consumption of fast foods and decreased consumption of fresh produce) such that the country now has astounding rates of diabetes, obesity and hypertension. Moreover, the rates of NCCDs in the population are also gender-skewed, as women carry about twice the burden as men for obesity and diabetes prevalence rates. There is thus an ever-increasing need to create more food sovereignty in Barbados and to promote a healthier diet.

One of the challenges faced with trying to promote small-scale domestic food production is the long-standing cultural stigma attached to agricultural work due to its historical association with slavery (in the production of sugar cane). Agricultural work over the years has also declined in prestige, as work in the hospitality sector or in offices often offers more money and comfort than working in the field. Thus the promotion of agriculture has to be approached in such a way to counteract these challenges.

This is where my work this summer comes in. I have been working with IICA to evaluate the extent of the food insecurity situation in Barbados by monitoring food prices around the island, by identifying the cost-savings of having a backyard garden and monitoring and evaluating crop production in their demonstration garden at St. Patrick’s Cathedral near Bridgetown. I have also created an instructional booklet on how to grow a backyard garden using sustainable practices and am working on a promotional flyer on the health benefits of home food production. Two other McGill students have also been working with me on this project, in particular for the budgetary analysis component (cost-savings analysis).

This work addresses the above problems in many ways. By creating promotional and instructional materials on how to garden and its benefits, it demystifies the gardening process. The budgetary analysis of IICA’s greenhouse and alternative garden setups also provides quantitative evidence supporting the project. We all know that money talks, so proving that gardening reduces a family’s financial burden by providing fresh, healthy fruit and vegetables for a mere fraction of its cost in stores, or being able to sell excess produce for extra funds, has an immense allure. Furthermore, reduced medical bills due to improved health from increased vegetable and fruit consumption associated with home gardening is another major financial benefit.

Women can benefit from this in particular as they are the ones most likely to tend to the garden and therefore reap the largest physical activity and health benefits. Stay-at-home moms may also be able to get an additional income by selling excess produce.

So where am I now? With only two and a half weeks left, the booklet is complete but needs to be printed, the budget is done and we are giving a promotional presentation to various Barbadian NGOs to help publicize the garden project and hopefully help subsidize greenhouses. We’re completing our garden observations and are preparing our final report for submission.

More to come….!

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