The nation’s leader, Prime Minister Hon. Roosevelt Skerrit made clear his Government’s stance on supporting local.
Hon. Skerrit made statements to that effect when he spoke to the registration ceremony of the new Paix Bouche/Dos D’ane Agriculture and Marketing Cooperative last week.
The Prime Minister spoke strongly about the health and economic benefits of eating local.
“With developments, we sometimes get accustomed to fast foods when there are so many fruits from which we can get juice: cherries, guavas, golden apple, governor’s plum and passion fruit among others. It is so easy,” he said.
“You put a few cherries in the blender [for] two minutes or you harvest your guavas, cut them up, boil them, let them settle for a while then blend them for a few minutes [and] you will have guava juice. Some of us think it’s better to go to a supermarket and fill a trolley with juices that will not last us the night.”
Hon. Skerrit said further that by refusing to support local, Dominicans are in fact exporting local jobs to foreign countries.
“We buy these imported products from many different countries and we export our jobs. Then, we [ask] what is Government doing for employment when by our own very practices we are denying ourselves and our children a profession. Even if the locally-manufactured produce is more expensive, we have to be nationalistic in our consumption practices because each one of us has the power of reducing the food import bill.”
The country’s leader therefore encouraged farmers as well as the average Dominican to remain committed to the local agriculture industry.
“We have to ensure that as a country, as a people, we maintain our excitement, our interest and our commitment to agriculture,” he emphasised.
The Prime Minister continued, “If we are to feed ourselves, if we are to ensure that we have food security, we can’t all move away from the farms. The little that we can do we should it. It can add up and we will be able to supply and maintain ourselves, because God forbid we find ourselves importing food.”
At that ceremony, Prime Minister Skerrit pledged his Government’s full support to the new Paix Bouche/Dos D’ane Agriculture and Marketing Cooperative. He committed ten thousand dollars to the group for the procurement of farm inputs.