Feeding ourselves: Tobago’s agricultural heritage

Dr Rita Pemberton

WHEN THE British imperial authorities sought to extend sugar cultivation in its Caribbean territories and Tobago was made a British colony, all its land resources were first used to facilitate commercial agriculture.

At that time, the primary motive of the imperial authorities was to maximise production to take advantage of the favourable market for sugar in Europe. Therefore, in the imperial scheme, the purpose of the island was to produce sugar for export, and consequently, all the accessible arable land was earmarked for creating sugar plantations, which were to be served by imported African labour.

The guiding principle of this commercial enterprise was that the island’s resources were best utilised to produce the more profitable export crop and import cheap food to feed the labour force.

No thought was initially given to local food production, for it was assumed that the price of imported food items and labour would remain cheap, and the supply would remain stable and available in perpetuity. The thinking was wrong on all counts.

Tobago’s agriculture was heavily dependent on two trades: the transatlantic trade in captive Africans and the food trade from the British North American colonies.

It was therefore prone to the vicissitudes of war and seafaring activity which characterised the 18th and early 19th centuries. In the first place, British/French rivalry over possession of the island was never satisfactorily settled in the minds of the French, who kept seeking to dislodge the British from the island and insert France as the rightful owner.

Also, the trade in African bodies attracted pirates, who attacked trading ships and relieved them of the cargo, causing an escalation in the prices of both food and labour.

Tobago planters were never satisfied that they had achieved the ideal supply of African labourers, and complained that the cost of labour kept increasing.

The outbreak of slave resistance very early in the plantation years of the sugar industry presented a hurdle to the big landowners.

The outbreak of the American and French Revolutions provided major challenges for Tobago planters. The supply of food for the enslaved population – cornmeal, salted fish and pork – was immediately curtailed and the island experienced what one historian referred to as “starving time.”

This food crisis led to change from the old practice of depending on imported food to a new approach, in which each enslaved person in Tobago over 14 was allocated a plot of land, called the provision ground, to grow food. Therefore estate land had to be reassigned as food gardens for the enslaved.

These provision grounds became stamped into the food-production culture of the island and stimulated the integration of African traditional agricultural practices and foodways which were centred on food crops and the “eat what you grow” practice, which characterised the island through to the 20th century.

This development made the population feed itself to survive the food crisis. But the provision ground became the basis for the island’s agricultural heritage, for it allowed enslaved Africans with unused skills in agriculture to practise their craft.

After Emancipation the provision grounds became a source of survival, an instrument of resistance to plantation control and the means to the improvement of families on the island.

With the demise of the sugar industry during the last two decades of the 19th century, a landed peasantry developed in Tobago, because abandoned estates, which fell to the crown, were subdivided and sold to peasants.

The attempt by some large farmers to diversify into coconuts and cocoa allowed freed Africans to integrate these crops into the island’s agricultural heritage.

While the dominant property owners possessed most of the surviving estates, private lands were held by small farmers, who faced several challenges. Most of the small farms were on marginal land on the windward side of the island, where the terrain was steepest, and access difficult.

Despite being described as old-fashioned and inefficient, peasant agriculture fed the population and allowed some families to improve their standard of living.

The demise of Tobago’s sugar industry created problems for the ruling class, who sought to keep the industry operational. However, after gasping for financial sustenance, Tobago’s sugar industry defied resuscitation during the mid-19th century and finally succumbed to its afflictions during the last two decades of the century.

Bereft of the earnings from its main export income-earner, the island could not meet the cost of its administration. As a result it no longer fitted into the imperial profit-making plans and was joined with Trinidad.

It was an enforced arrangement which was not well received by the members of the Trinidad planter class, who were coaxed into the union with some of the island’s selling points. These included the fact that land was cheap in Tobago, making it possible for Trinidadians to invest in it and strengthen its plantation sector.

Trinidad’s ruling class was concerned that Tobago would be a dependency and a drag on their resources, and showed little interest in landowning in Tobago. They remained resolutely opposed to the union, even though the peasants’ food production was important to the poor in Trinidad. Tobago’s food-production practices earned the island the title “food basket” of Trinidad.

These practices were based on the production of food, including ground provisions, pigeon peas and corn, now revered as health foods. Behind the imperial mind was the development of an export sector, as in Trinidad, which did not materialise.

Yet food from Tobago provided an affordable alternative supply to the working class of Trinidad. While there were hunger marches in Trinidad during the 1930s, these did not occur in Tobago, where there was no shortage of food.

Tobago’s agricultural heritage developed during the crisis when the need to feed the enslaved population during the 1780s was urgent. This caused a realignment in land allocation on the plantations, which shifted from a focus on agriculture for export to a recognition of the need to make provision for feeding the workforce without depending on food imports.

As a result, the island’s agricultural heritage made Tobago self-sufficient in food.