The Bahamas government has reportedly bought 502 acres of farm land in North Andros from Kerzner International to 'promote' farming.
It's amazing that we don't seem to learn from history.
Larry Smith reminded us about governments failed hand at farming in his essay, Tough Call, last week about South Eleuthera.
He said:
Levy imported cattle from his Sherman Stock Farm in Massachusetts and supplied milk, eggs and ice cream to the Nassau market for decades. Even after he died in 1951, his plantation continued to employ hundreds and provided much of the infrastructure for nearby Alice Town. In addition to agricultural facilities, the operation featured restaurants, stores, a yacht club and a power plant.
But Hatchet Bay Farm was taken over by the government in 1975 for political reasons. And it's much-lamented closure nine years later will forever be associated with former prime minister Sir Lynden Pindling's gloating remark that state ownership had made the farm "the greatest success story in Bahamian agricultural history". [More...]
With this kind of history, why would the government by land, "much of which is already being used by Andros farmers to cultivate a wide variety of product for export" other than for more political reasons?
As Bob Knaus commented on the Smith essay:
Infrastructure and institutions do matter. The Bahamas lacks these. Caveat Emptor.
I have to ask the rhetorical question. If the private sector can't make it happen, I don't have very much confidence that government can.
Do you?
