Food security bill finally to be introduced in HOA
The Virgin Islands Food Security and Sustainability Bill will finally make its appearance before the House of Assembly this year as the government says it is committed to ensuring food production sectors are progressive and sustained through the implementation of the legislation.
Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Dr Natalio Wheatley said he was grateful to introduce his first bill and is thankful to the officers at the ministry and the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for their hard work which has gotten it this far.
During a recent session in the House of Assembly, Dr Wheatley said, several additional meetings will be held now that the bill is a public document.
“We have had so many meetings on this Bill already, but we will have additional meetings in preparation to come to the House of Assembly to have a thorough debate and to go through the Bill line by line in the Committee stage to make sure we have the best Bill possible,” the Agriculture and Fisheries Minister said.
Dr Wheatley stated that the government recognizes the importance of food security, the livelihoods of farmers and fisherfolk and the opportunities in education and tourism that these sectors present.
“In order to move agriculture and fisheries to significant levels, government will strengthen linkages to the tourism industry to create new jobs and business opportunities for our people while sustaining our culture and providing food security,” he said.
Meanwhile, during the recent Throne Speech, Governor John Rankin said the government is set to review and modernise existing agricultural and fisheries legislation to establish a harmonized framework for the sectors.
“This Bill will establish the Virgin Islands Agriculture and Fisheries Authority to be the lead support in the future development of the agriculture and fisheries industries in the Virgin Islands,” Rankin said.
The governor stated that once the Virgin Islands Food Security and Sustainability Bill is enacted, government will begin consolidating and revising the regulations to support the primary legislation.
“This is necessary to develop sustainable agriculture and fisheries to support the needs of the people of the Virgin Islands and further strengthen the tourism sector, supermarkets, restaurants, and the cruise and yachting industries,” the governor said.
The Agriculture and Fisheries Department will be hosting a series of public meetings for fishers, farmers and stakeholders to discuss the bill. The fisherfolks meeting happened on Monday, the farmers had a meeting yesterday, and a stakeholders meeting will be held on February 3 at 7 pm.
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and after the bill is passed it will rot on the shelf
The Food Security Bill is a good start to addressing VI food insecurity issue. However, the bill must be aggressively followed up with concrete action; customers must feel the positive effects of the bill with lower food prices. Cost of living and food prices in the VI are in the stratosphere and rising. Further, agriculture faces many challenges.
Namely, food production is in the decline, there is an indifference by locals to agricultural production (working ground), lack of arable land, competition with imports, and the VI import most of its food. I will take a WAG that it imports north of 80% of its food.
Moreover, typically the imported food is lower in nutrients and high in calories, fat, sugar, and sodium. Fixing the food insecurity challenges is a community issue, ie, government and residents. I’m going off the reservation and suggest the VI consider a means tested Universal Basic Income (UBI) initiative to help address the food challenges.
@E. Leonard, I was with you up to Universal Basic Income. You realize the BVI operates on capitalism and Universal Basic Income is socialism. Socialism makes people lazy and dependent. Too much dependency in BVI already.
Boi, you are a radical, a riot and an outta box tinker. How will this UBI thing work? Will it be for all residents or just for locals, belongers and work permit holders? How much will each recipient get a year, a month, etc? When and where can I sign up? Lol
While that would be a good think this Act is anything other, a nice title to hide a ream of areas, for instance all dogs must be tied. A terrible bill that does not achieve its objective by being too diverse. A good recommendation would be establish a statutory body similar to the FSC , call it the Food Security Commission, under this divisions of Agriculture, Farming, Fishing etc would operate.