Bahamas to grow rice to prevent shortages?

Lots of ink has been used recently over concerns about the world running out of food, and in The Bahamas there are concerns about running out of rice.

One of the reasons grocery store shelves in The Bahamas were running low on rice was related to price controls, but that did not prevent The Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Larry Cartwright coming to every Bahamians rescue and suggesting that we would simply have to grow our own rice.

This prompted your not so humble blogger to do some research on the Internet.

The first web site that appeared when I searched Google on "how to grow rice" was this site... explaining to kids how to grow rice in a bucket.

Assuming that was not enough to feed us, I decided to click on the second link on Google's search results that took me to this page... from Wikipedia on "Rice".

It turns out that soil quality is important. And our soil quality is very poor, whereby in years past, our subsistence farmers could not survive and had to work at other jobs, construction or fishing etc to take care of their families.

Wikipedia goes on to state:

"Rice cultivation is well-suited to countries and regions with low labour costs and high rainfall, as it is very labour-intensive to cultivate and requires plenty of water for cultivation. Rice can be grown practically anywhere, even on a steep hill or mountain. Although its species are native to South Asia and certain parts of Africa, centuries of trade and exportation have made it commonplace in many cultures."

"The traditional method for cultivating rice is flooding the fields with or after setting the young seedlings. This simple method requires sound planning and servicing of the water damming and channeling, but reduces the growth of lesser robust weed and pest plants and reduces vermin that has no submerged growth state. However, with rice growing and cultivation the flooding is not mandatory, whereas all other methods of irrigation require higher effort in weed and pest control during growth periods and a different approach for fertilizing the soil."

I'm not suggesting that Rice cannot be grown in The Bahamas, but if one were to pay attention to the two quotes above, it would appear The Bahamas is not ideally suited to growing rice.

Bahamian Politicians seem to get an over powering urge that they can solve every perceived problem, by just talking about them.

In the case of rice, it might have been better if Mr. Cartwright had been enjoying a mouth full of Bahamian peas and rice when he was asked about the supposed rice shortages we were experiencing, so he would have had more time to think about us being self sufficient, before speaking.