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Unearthing the Agro-Economic Potential of the British Virgin Islands
by Fitzroy B. Beckford
To anyone born during the tourism-induced boom period in the British Virgin Islands, the term agriculture connotes visions of earth-stained and tattered folk marching to the fields with pitch-forks over the shoulder, engaging in menial work that carries little glory or sophistication.
While the farmer is thought of being poor, uneducated, and usually well over the age of sixty, the average young person aspires to work in the tourism or financial services sector, is eager to purchase a new car to ride around the scenic roads of the islands, has gone through a school system that has provided some education, but has been denied a basic knowledge in the agricultural sciences.
Because of this basic lack, any proposal by proponents to enable the development of the territory’s agricultural resources will furrow the brows of this group of citizens, and would naturally be met by the question, “Why Agriculture?”
Like every other country in the Caribbean region, occupation of the British Virgin Islands began with agricultural activity. When Europeans realised that there were no ‘fields of gold’ to be found in the islands of the West Indies, they quickly turned their attention to the cultivation of crops. The British Virgin Islands deserves to have its rightful place recorded in the history of agriculture in the Caribbean, for it has had its moments of shining glory and boasted years when it was the gem of the British Empire, becoming the main supplier of cotton to its colonial masters before the development of the cotton industry in America. For over three hundred years, the territory continued to be dependent upon its agricultural resources until the middle of the 1950’s began to usher in a new shift in economic fortunes.
By the beginning of the new millennium, wealth and prosperity had been achieved and maintained for over forty years, so why bother with a thing of the past that had never afforded the nation’s forefathers any meaningful standard of living? Indeed, why Agriculture?
This is a very important question, and the people of the British Virgin Islands deserve to get an understanding into why the government should continue to invest in the sector. Many of them have heard the speech by the Minister of Natural Resources at the 2001 Agricultural Exhibition that his major objective is to make agriculture the ‘third pillar of the economy’, and they need to be informed how the process of transforming the fledgling sector will take place. Is it all just rhetoric, or is there a meaningful plan in the making?
These questions are explored and analysed by looking at the factors which affected local agriculture in the past, examining the current influences, and proposing strategies for positive change within the sector. However, the question begins at ‘what is agriculture’, and therefore the first task is to explain this in very simple language, so that the unbiased mind can begin to form a basic understanding of the subject.
Fitzroy B. Beckford is an Agricultural Scientist with over 15 years experience in the field. He holds a Master of Science Degree in Agricultural and Rural Development and has lived and worked in the British Virgin Islands for nearly a decade, during which time he embarked on extensive research on its crop and livestock sub-sectors.
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