When I was a young man the landscape in Barbados was a garden of bountifulness. Every field was growing a crop, may it be sugarcane, yams, sweet potatoes, onions, field peas, green peas to be harvested for Christmas, corn grown for Roberts Manufacturing and  at Colleton plantation where I worked in St John, we even grew English potatoes. 

Now what I see each time I drive through the country are miamossies no longer being shrubs but trees and cow itch and the land is being returned to its state as in the seventeenth century.

The new mantra of the large developers is "oh I have three hundred an fifty acre's of land banked' and others have acreages exceedingly higher than this. 

Unfortunately when the land is banked its not productive.

Its time for this practice to stop and bring these arable lands back into production, otherwise you will have to pay a higher rate of taxes until the land is developed. 

When land is unproductive its to the detriment of all Barbadians and this practice should be stopped immediately, as it only benefits large developers.

WHEN  A COUNTRY LOSES ITS ABILITY TO FEED ITSELF THE COUNTRY PERISHES.

by

Jeffrey Chandler