Cathy Advises from Taiwan on St Lucia’s Food Security

The National Pingtung University is Taiwan’s largest, with a special focus on agriculture, green energy and the blue economy. Currently, it accommodates 306 international students in various departments and faculties, and the institution takes special pride in training students to consider innovative solutions for social change. One conspicuous student is Cathy Eugene, the only Saint Lucian at the school. Cathy is an employee of the Ministry of Commerce. She is currently on study leave to attain her Masters in food security. She is the daughter of two farmers from Bocage who inspired her to pursue a career in the field of agriculture. 

After graduating from Castries Comprehensive Secondary School, Cathy attended the Guyana School of Agriculture and later gained her Bachelor’s in agri-business management from the University of the West Indies. Cathy aims to fully serve Saint Lucia’s agriculture industry with her knowledge, and by that she doesn’t refer only to producing bananas.

During an impromptu interview halfway across the world, Cathy had a lot to say about her country’s development. “I focus on food security because it’s efficient. It’s understanding where we are, how secure we are; but my research is directly focused on food loss and wastage and looking for strategies,” she said.

She had considered investigating the scope that mangoes have to offer because of their seasonal abundance in Saint Lucia. But, with the help of her academic advisor, she decided to broaden this idea to overall food loss, to see how much food we lose to natural disasters, poor storage, lack of infrastructure and wastage by the consumer. “I’m supposed to look at that level and see what strategies we can put in place to reduce the losses.”

One of Cathy’s suggestions to improve our current standing in agriculture is to study the benefits of a theme of innovative products that Saint Lucia can produce. She used chicken as an example: “A lot of the foods we import, we’re not sure of the chemicals in them. What we have to look at is producing a healthy product. We must find out what our niche is, what our advantage is. And I think in Saint Lucia what we can benefit from is producing healthy foods, because people will pay money for healthy food.”

Her argument is that although bananas were once our biggest export product, we can no longer rely on them exclusively. “In agriculture, one of the things we understand is that raw produce is the least paid industry, so we need to move away. And even if we do bananas, why are we still looking to export this fruit? Can we not do something else with the banana? Even with the leaves or some other part? Value added is the most critical thing,” Cathy insisted.

“We’ve been self-sufficient with eggs for so many years.  We’re still cracking eggs while other people are producing liquid eggs. We are so small we cannot compete on just product. We have to find what is the value we’re competing with. We have to come up with some intrinsic value to put on that same chocolate that you can just pick up for two dollars and get an experience and you’ll still spend five, but you got something more.”

Cathy also proposed that Saint Lucian farmers focus on efficient and nutritious food distribution and zoning: “Although we’re small, the country has different soil types so we know what is best for where. If you want good dasheen, you would go to Soufriere; if you want sweet potato, you’d get it in Choiseul.”

Cathy revealed, “One of the things about diversification, which was alarming for me, was I used to wonder why developing countries had so many obese people. It’s because the world doesn’t have a problem with the amount of food; it’s the type of food being delivered. Persons would eat a big plate of food and that’s just staples.” 

Cathy insists that if certain foods are not grown, people will eat only what is there, and its something that needs to be changed for food and nutrition security. If the country is zoned, there will food variety. “When I came to Taiwan I was like, ‘Oh boy, that little bit of food!’ But my body has gotten used to it. It’s just us changing; it’s a whole re-education of what food we should consume, and how, and the market would demand what the farmers would produce.”

Finally, Cathy suggested re-education for farmers and government too. “Taiwan’s agricultural structure and Saint Lucia’s are so different,” she observed. “Agriculture is driven by the farmers in Taiwan. You have things like extension marketing under the farmers’ association. In Saint Lucia it’s done under the government. I’ve been saying this for a long time:

I think the extension service needs to be privatized.” 

Referring to her personal experience, Cathy emphasizes that young people are interested in agriculture—and have always been. But like the mandate adopted by Taiwan’s Department of Agriculture, it’s only with government assistance and strategized approaches that the younger work force and its new ideas can be accommodated.

“You have to know what to market; see which ones we can get the most value out of and produce for the market,” she advised. “I always say, before you put one seed into the ground you must know where you’ll sell what you produce, the volume you’ll be selling, and what you expect. If government puts subsidies only on bananas, as a farmer you’ll only want to produce bananas and then you would also be eating only bananas. The policies that the government has will drive people to diversify.”

This reporter visited Taiwan’s Department of Agriculture, which displayed rice products as innovations that promote healthier alternatives to worldwide favourites such as pasta, flour and even cookies. As an island, although larger than any in the Caribbean, Taiwan has faced similar challenges in its agricultural industry. Find out in next week’s STAR what are the department’s new implementations to encourage better agriculture. –