Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS), James Paul has warned that the country has not gone far enough in effectively tackling praedial larceny.
Paul, who has contended that the crime is jeopardising the livelihoods of farmers, is adamant that Barbados continues to drag its feet on addressing the troubling issue.
“It is jeopardising investment in the sector. If people continue to experience losses, the food security would jeopardise prices and cause them to be higher than they should be. And then of course, it would affect levels of efficiency in the industry…”
“Praedial larceny has a lot of impact on the cost of the commodity, the competitiveness of the product being produced, everything,” Paul told Barbados TODAY in an interview.
While welcoming the recent formation of a special police patrol to combat crop theft in the south of the island, Paul raised questions about what was being done at the national level.
He said there were several issues related to crop and livestock theft that needed to be addressed, and called for an awareness campaign designed to discourage Barbadians from buying stolen produce.
“What I think we need to do is have measures that help to control it. If there was not a market for stolen produce, there would be no stolen produce on the market.”
“I think we need to do a more heightened public relations campaign to basically emphasise why praedial larceny is unacceptable, and why people should not engage in it,” Paul said.
“In other words, there has to be some element of moral suasion. The produce is going somewhere. I know that farmers are supposed to issue receipts, invoices or whatever as proof of purchase for things that were bought from them. Things like these; and making sure that they are adhered to.”
The CEO also questioned whether the laws dealing with praedial larceny were strict enough.
“One of the other issues is that we make laws. The question is, the extent to which we adhere to the laws that we make, and are the fines that we impose adequate enough to dissuade people from committing the crimes in the future?”
“All of these questions might be answered in the negative. We probably are not doing the things that we need to do. We have to try with what we can,” Paul said.
Paul maintained that Barbados needed farmers to make food security a reality.
He said if the high level of praedial larceny was not urgently addressed, it could force farmers out of work.
“We cannot have real food security without an agricultural sector. As I have always said, the fresher the food, the better it is. A lot of these foods that are being imported, you are not even sure about them. Agriculture is necessary because it helps to mitigate against other things when it comes to health.”
“A lot of farmers eventually decide to give up. They ask themselves, ‘what’s the point of complaining?’ Again, I emphasise to those farmers who have that attitude, that unless you say something, we would not know. It is important to say something, so that, for instance, if we do know that things are happening, we can take action to prevent the things that are happening,” Paul said.
(EJ)
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