Comparing apples and oranges

ONE OF THE overarching messages of this year's budget presentation hinged on the idea of indulgence: Trinis’ appetites for the finer things are draining precious foreign exchange.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert shifted gears from a focus on cars to apples and grapes. He referenced the import bill associated with “luxury” fruits. You may recall in previous years Imbert identified nuts and dates as other extravagances among the profligate, belly-centric population.

Government supporters seized upon the apples-and-grapes distraction, reinforcing the notion that Trinis have, overall, cultivated fancy foreign tastes. If there's one thing people in this country excel at, it's reductive analysis. It's either too difficult or not worth the bother to figure out why a thing is the way it is. By the way, I'll circle back to the idea of posh foreign appetites a bit later on.

There are a few reasons these fruits have had such an enduring hold on consumers. Apples and grapes are portable – easy to take to work and consume without making too much of a mess. Additionally, these fruits are available year round.

Apples and grapes are, ultimately, merely symbols of a classic manifestation of Dutch disease – as the oil industry grew, agriculture took, not a back seat, but was kicked off the bus entirely. The proposition was simple – money is no problem. We'll merely buy everything we need. Food production became secondary to cultivating an image of sophistication through false erudition and enterprise, qualities which would be purchased with petrodollars.

Like other countries drunk on oil, Venezuela being the nearest example, agriculture was dropped like a hot potato. This was done in favour of building high-rises, putting people in cold breeze and engineering an import culture that strengthens the elite and their political courtesans.

Politicians are today complaining about foreign tastes that were germinated by earlier versions of themselves. People working in the agriculture sector were deliberately made to see farming as an ignoble practice, something to be ashamed of – something to escape.

You may recall former prime minister Patrick Manning, in a fiery platform speech aimed at eviscerating the opposition, said, "They want to put you back in the land," solidifying the idea of agriculture as retrograde and unschooled. More recently, Prime Minister Rowley poured cold water on the idea of agriculture as a plank for economic diversification, suggesting we don't have enough land for that.

Agriculture's place in the pecking order of national importance is seen clearly in its ministry, typically the least funded in government. This is reflective of the largely informal nature of the agriculture sector – small landholdings of farmers eking out a living in a volatile market characterised by either glut or dearth of short crops and intermittent if not absent supply of in-demand produce.

Here's an example: I find locally grown mushrooms infinitely superior to the imported product. They're also competitively priced. Trouble is, the supply of local mushrooms is unreliable so sometimes Jolly Green Giant gets the vote.

Furthermore, for a tropical island, “local” fruits are either too hard to come by or too expensive to buy regularly. A “heap” of mangoes can be as much as $25 for five. When mangoes go out of season you either suck sour orange or suck salt. Conversely, a bag of eight small Gala apples in the grocery is $20. Watermelon will sell at $1.99 per pound one week and $4 per pound the next with, at least from the perspective of the consumer, neither rhyme nor reason.

There are farmers trying to develop the sector with niche products such as organic greens, all-natural eggs and cocoa. However, crumbling rural infrastructure, the paucity of agricultural access roads and theft are major obstacles and disincentives. As such, there isn't much to motivate people to invest in the sector. Young people, seeing the hell their weather-worn farming parents went through, are far less likely to turn to the land to inherit ignominy and hardship.

So we can be made to feel bad about eating apples and grapes, but that won't reduce the food import bill and stem the outflow of foreign exchange. We are reaping the rotten fruit of the disdain for agriculture planted by past and current politicians. Bringing down the food import bill will require the tough work of nurturing the sector to produce the food and variety we need. It's, of course, far easier to simply paint all Trinis as too fancy for their own good.