The Editor, Sir:

Like Stephen Smith (Friday, May 9), I am disturbed and disappointed by the public's response to Dr Tufton's suggestion that we grow/eat more cassava. I recently listened to people from Old Harbour on CVM TV's vox pop, 'What A Gwaan?'

Very few persons said that they would plant something, i.e. help themselves/the nation. All most persons did was to bemoan and call on Government to reduce the high prices. We have become a country of whiners and complainers.

I applaud the Government's efforts in the area of school gardens, the residential fruit tree planting programme and the Urban Backyard Garden Programme. It is this latter programme that has especially grabbed my attention. I started cultivating at home only as an experiment in September last year. Then in January of this year, I decided that I had to be self-sufficient in certain crops. I hoped to save $18,000 per annum.

Satisfied with eating own produce

Although I will not achieve that goal in the immediate future, I take great satisfaction in eating my own produce: tomatoes, sweet peppers, string beans, cucumbers, callaloo, pak choi. All these crops are cultivated in pots. I also have a home-consumption plot in St Elizabeth - pinto beans, black-eyed peas, green peas, string beans, sweet peppers, sweet corn, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelons, tomatoes, pumpkins, Lucea and sweet yam.

We chat too much in this country. Food security is critical. The Jamaican people should see in the minister's intervention the message: 'Eat What We Grow and Grow What We Eat'. Instead, we have this fixation on cassava.

Preferred to steal

This message will be a hard sell in 21st century Jamaica. We have come to think that food is something we buy in a supermarket, not something that someone grew. I shall never forget the number of persons from the community who made annual raids on my otaheite apple tree when I lived in central Manchester. They never saw the umpteen apple suckers at the foot of the tree. I would have been more than happy to part with these suckers. They could have their own tree, but that would take too much effort. They preferred to steal!

Regrettably, the Jamaica Labour Party government of the 1980s and the subsequent People's National Party regimes abandoned Michael Manley's agriculture programmes. The urban dwellers of the Corporate Area, Spanish Town and Portmore especially need to do something. The Government needs to have specific objectives. We could start with 20 per cent of households having a backyard garden. What a Jamaica we would have if one in three households (33.33 per cent) cultivated a backyard garden!

I am, etc.,

NORMAN W.M. THOMPSON

nwmt31@yahoo.com

c/o Dept of English and Modern Languages

Northern Caribbean University

Mandeville