Agro-tourism; The best thing since cassava bread

Agro-Tourism: the best thing since cassava bread

Every adult in the Caribbean can define tourism and recite real and imagined benefits of that industry. Interestingly, when asked about agro-tourism, the stock response is about people visiting farms and helping to harvest produce. This narrow concept of what agro-tourism entails is not limited to people outside of the agricultural sector. Whilst most will agree that Agribusiness involves any link between agriculture and business there is less of a sense that all the links between agriculture and tourism are covered by the agro-tourism rubric. Additionally, it is not clear that everyone in the Caribbean makes the connection between agriculture and food; food can be had in many countries in the absence of a strong agricultural sector. Many Caribbean consumers look to their respective Minister of Trade for pronouncements on food prices and availability.

It is the expanded interpretation of agro-tourism that can be seen as the best thing since cassava bread. Agro-tourism incorporates the strengthening of culinary tourism where the guest consumes food and beverages made from locally grown produce. The guest’s activities may also include a visit to a farm, market, processing facility, distillery or other agro-industrial complex. Recognition of green spaces, hotel gardens, aquaria, in-house plant décor, rural landscapes, “farmscapes”, heritage parks, outdoor museums, seine-pulling, lake and marine sport-fishing, and beachfront parks as fillips to tourism highlight agriculture’s influence.

Caribbean leaders are openly admitting that the traditional vision of tourism as involving sun, sea and sand has to be reoriented. Visitors are seeking authentic experiences that can be easily incorporated into the realms of the flora and fauna of the region. Agriculture is about the husbanding of plants and animals within natural or manipulated environments. There are no limits to the kinds of authentic experiences one can amass by interfacing with these natural or manipulated environments. Touring a plantation, eating food grown and prepared using traditional techniques, enjoying handicraft made with indigenous plants, and purchasing leather craft are all agriculture-based experiences that appease tourist appetites for memorable experiences.

Lest the reader concludes that all of this is pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, award-winning tours, parks and culinary experiences dot the Caribbean landscape from Guyana in the south to Jamaica in the north. From well-established train tours in St Kitts to heritage parks of more recent vintage in Mainstay, Guyana: agro-tourism is opening up opportunities for education and commerce. These links are not new, in the 1980s one of the most successful and comprehensive Sugar Factory tours was conducted by the late Melford O’Flaharty in Nevis. That was as effective an outdoor museum as can be found anywhere in the world. Mamiku Gardens in St Lucia incorporates pristine landscaping and rich history to provide a renowned tourist destination. The gardens contain a wide range of tropical plants, orchids, herbs, and several secluded secret gardens. The rest of the estate is a plantation comprising banana, passion fruit and mangoes.

In this era of acknowledged Climate Change there are already indications that the sun, sea and sand experience can be acquired at higher latitudes, thereby reducing the number of reasons to travel into traditional, more equatorial regions. Agro-tourism improves the likelihood of a unique experience through links to the natural ecosystem, the agricultural ecosystem, the social environment and the cultural inheritance. Additionally, European tourists in particular are concerned about their carbon footprint and increasingly do not want to contribute to additional “food-miles”. Food-miles is a term which refers to the distance food is transported from the time of its production until it reaches the consumer. It is one dimension used in assessing the environmental impact of food. Locally produced food, sustainable production techniques, environmental protection and significant biodiversity are agriculture-influenced drawing cards for eco-sensitive tourists.

Agro-tourism runs the entire gamut. It includes farm-based accommodation as can be attained at Rainbow Nature Resort, Tobago, where the hotel is part of a producing fifty-acre farmstead. Conformably it also includes outdoor agro-historical museums as the agro-processing history trail under construction at Montaque in St Vincent and the Cassava processing facility in Tapakuma, Guyana, which is part of the Tri-Lakes community suite of Amerindian tourism products. Agro-tourism is poised to be the next best thing since authentic Tapakuma cassava bread. Will the powers-that-be harness it or await an influx of traditional tourists if and when oil prices and airfares ever come down?

Food Safety Issues

Food Safety issues affecting Accessibility, Utilization and Stability of supplies

Critical Food safety issues affecting Food Accessibility

There have been concerns that food accessed through food-aid and emergency programmes has not always been certified as safe. The latest direct threat to food safety revolves around Genetically Modified foods. The United States as a major benefactor is under no obligation to state whether the food has been genetically modified. Regional recipients do not have the wherewithal to conduct the appropriate tests. The safety assessment of GM foods generally investigates: (a) direct health effects (toxicity), (b) tendencies to provoke allergic reaction (allergenicity); (c) specific components thought to have nutritional or toxic properties; (d) the stability of the inserted gene; (e) nutritional effects associated with genetic modification; and (f) any unintended effects which could result from the gene insertion.  In the Caribbean context accessibility is often equated with the purchase or grant of imported food for the more vulnerable citizens. There is the perception that food recipients ought not to “look a gift horse in the mouth”. The authenticity and safety of food accessed via emergency aid or special arrangement transfers is very rarely challenged.

The imported food is made more competitive oftentimes due to the removal of tariffs.  Whilst none of the regional leaders who subscribe to that mechanism have publicly acknowledged that it is flawed, former U.S. President Bill Clinton has done so.   President Clinton, now a United Nations special envoy to Haiti, publicly apologized in March 2010 for championing policies that destroyed Haiti's rice production.  In the mid-1990s he encouraged the impoverished country to dramatically cut tariffs on imported U.S. rice.  "It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake," Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else."

Critical Food safety issues affecting Food Utilization.

A critical underpinning of food and nutrition security is that the food accessed will be utilized in a fashion that produces the greatest utility. This is not always the case especially for the groups at risk. The prevailing view is that the donor’s or State’s role is completed once the material transfer has been effected.   In the absence of targeted programmes, the eventual utilization can be compromised. A common example is in the preparation of parboiled rice, there are households that still “boil” rice in copious amounts of water and then “strain” the grains sending the nutrient-enriched water down the drain.

Food safety concerns abound in the utilization phase, where improper handling or preparation at the household level can compromise all of the due diligence that went in to its production and acquisition. Foods may be undercooked or prepared and stored under less than hygienic conditions.  The latter scenario exposes the food to physical, chemical and biological contamination.

Critical Food safety issues affecting Stability of supplies

The major household level activity geared to stabilize supplies usually encompasses storage.  There are food safety implications if the storage regimen is compromised by chemical deterioration, biological decomposition or physical contamination. The weather variations that can lead to disruptions in the supply of food are often contributory to the stored-food safety issues.  Heavy rains and flooding not only interrupt production, and distribution activities but can also trigger significant losses of stored food.   The growth of moulds of health significance such as Aspergillus spp. (aflatoxins) and contamination with E. coli from floodwater contamination are common examples.

Emergency operations, as are common after a weather-triggered event, often rely less on established procedures for the storage, packaging and distribution of food.  Given the accompanying shortage of potable water, the sanitizing of equipment, vehicles and utensils is often seen as a lower order priority.