Feed An Island

There can be many causes for food insecurity, a changing climate, a devastating weather event, depletion of freshwater resources, soil degradation, insect infestations, over population, political upheaval, and economic hardship. A changing climate and devastating weather events are the most prevalent issues for island nations.

“Tuvalu is sinking,” Finance Minister Seve Paeniu proclaims of his island nation as he sits down for an interview with Yahoo News at the U.N. Climate Change Conference.

With a population of just over 11,000 residents, Tuvalu is an idyllic South Pacific atoll consisting of nine low-lying islands whose highest elevation is roughly 15 feet. Thanks to sea level rise, each year that elevation shrinks a little bit more.

“We are now living the climate change in Tuvalu, we are seeing land fast disappearing,” says Paeniu.

Other islands slowly sinking due to rising seas include some islands of the Republic Of Palau, Federated States of Micronesia and the Solomon Islands to name just a few.

Michael Manley, as Prime Minister of Jamaica, developed the slogan “Eat what you grow and grow what you eat”. He was one who championed the development of local agriculture and livestock. It never really caught on in Jamaica or in other Caribbean countries. Some countries took pride in the availability of foreign food items and sometimes considered it progress to have the same products and produce available in the Western developed countries.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, that slogan is now being espoused by governments throughout the Caribbean as they face the fragility of a dependence on “food shipped in from elsewhere”.

Throughout the inhabited islands of the world, food shortages are becoming more common, and the exorbitant cost of fresh produce means that some locals don’t eat or at least don’t eat as often as they should.

In unison, the governments of all island nations are taking action, addressing food security issues head on. Some are making more progress than others announcing initiatives to “grow locally” to lessen their dependence on imports. Most are looking for technologically modern ways to grow food that are compatible with the environment and sustainable in nature.

New ways to grow food must be introduced to islands that lack large contiguous tracts of land due mountainous topography and small plot land holdings. These new technologies must be simple to use, improve production and not pollute subterranean ground or river water with the use of man-made fertilizers (it has been discovered that the runoff from artificial fertilizers is destroying coral reefs).

Shared community farming is being encouraged and the governments hope to find an agricultural system that will promote that goal.

To Feed An Island you must first identify where the need is greatest. Typically, that need resides among the population that lives a distance from the resort communities developed along the coastal shorelines.

The fastest way to feed an island is to grow food right where people live.

Feed An Island agricultural technologies are scalable, that is to say they can be implemented to grow food for a family in using a small space in their yard, a village community garden or a small holder farm an acre or more in size.

The system is referred to as “remote agriculture”.

Remote agriculture can be defined as a “point of use” agricultural system that is deployed to grow food right where people live, eliminating the need for third-party price gouging, unnecessary storage, and expensive transport.