I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the present Minister of Agriculture mention the need to have bananas become a fruit that should be eaten and used at all schools island-wide, reflecting an opinion I penned recently.
In addition, he has also considered the possibility of utilising other parts of the fruit tree to create tissue paper.
Many other uses can be experimented with as we seek to become more self-sufficient and reduce our dependency on foreign products.
There are many other local products that need looking into, so my further suggestion is to have all the schools that presently have labs to pursue a national attitude of developing as many products that can be derived from local plants and indigenous foods.
In our quest for enriching our lives, we must begin to look at what we have, to reduce imports while we try to grow our economy.
For too long, we have had a culture of selling our raw materials such as cocoa, coffee, bananas and now sea moss, to the rest of the world and purchasing the items on the shelf produced with them by foreign countries.
In Barbados, we hear of flying fish sandwich but we can sell Kawang, Balawoo, or other fish sandwiches.
Now is the time to decide to learn how to can and bottle products and to package them in plastic or cartons like other countries do, but rather than us buying, begin to be the ones making, building and selling.
As the world seeks to build their Country and improve their economy, we too have to think like wise.
Students at all ages need to become involved and interested in home production and find uses.
We are on the brink of legalizing cannabis and despite the many products that can be derived from the plant, little is heard of the extracts that can become useful for industrial use.
We also have many plants and herbs that have (medicinal) value, but we rather go to the drug store instead of going back to roots.
We use the coconut but throw away the shell, not realizing that buttons for garments can be created from its shell. We eat turtle meat but discard the shell not realizing that the shell can be used to make frames for eye glasses.
We see thousands of mangoes and other fruits go to waste but will not convert them into dry fruit or use in other ways rather than configure new products, for domestic usage or find relevant uses we rather discard and leave it to waste.
I suggest further that all schools create students’ groups of both existing and past students to see ways that they can improve their learning and creativity in pushing their school and by extension their country into a more professional and prosperous direction. We ought not to wait until after they leave school to become creative but to instead plant these seeds while at school. And after they have left school they can further improve on their skills. I understand that banana peel can be converted into fertilizer for plants so can the dreaded sargassum seaweed, we have the IT gadgets at our finger tips to do the research plus the state is making funds available through loans and grants, but we keep repeating the same mistake of reproduction of what exist but not breaking new ground.
We can produce shoes, clothing and other functional wear if we only think local. As the world turns, so should we, or else we will always be buyers and not sellers and continue to be a retail society.
The tourism industry has few homemade craft items. But we would rather complain than fill in the blanks.
Being a proud Lucian should be about adding to our country’s creativity.
Friends, this is food for thought.
We must stop fattening the pockets of importers and start becoming the new business entrepreneurs. Let’s be like the new leaders of Africa and start being the ones to gain from our resources, not letting others rip them off.