James Paul, CEO of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS), has thrown a challenge out to supermarkets.
Speaking during the opening ceremony of the Lodge School’s Product Expo, which took place at Emerald City recently, Paul challenged and encouraged supermarkets to play a more engaging role in helping consumers embrace locally produced products by having more of them packed on their shelves.
“I want to focus on the role of the business enterprises such as Emerald City in helping this particular venture,” he said.
The BAS head noted that he compared the food on display at the expo with food that was on the shelves in the supermarket and noticed that the preparation for many of the food items looked exactly like the food the children would have prepared.
“The sad thing that is happening in our country today is that somehow we are a consuming public that has not embraced local foods as yet. Instead, what we embrace are things that are available from those Northern climates,” he said.
“When we speak about the whole question on how can we get more of our local foods to be acceptable to our people, the answer is that we need a more aggressive approach when it comes to these things, and greater support.”
Paul noted that he believed society was infatuated at the moment with the whole question of export and expressed that “we as Barbadians” have not given the visitors to our country enough exposure to the products that we make.
“I would like to challenge the management of Emerald City to have every single one of these recipes on display today to be made available at a more prominent time and in a more available and consistent way to our consumers to get them accustomed to eating local produce,” he said.
He explained that this would create a level of familiarity and added that taking an aggressive approach to creating a familiarity to local foods would be another piece of the puzzle needed to help reduce Barbados’ $800 million-dollar food import bill. (CLF)