Breadfruit, the humble staple of Barbadian backyards, is being elevated as a national “superfood” through a major new agricultural initiative, Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced on Wednesday as she opened a national agricultural school.
The move seeks to transform what was traditionally considered a “poor man’s food” into a globally recognised export crop, while linking modern agricultural training with land access for young people.
The announcement came at the official opening of the $40m Hope Agricultural Training Institute in St Lucy, a facility designed to equip young Barbadians with practical, modern skills and access to technology to drive innovation and productivity in agriculture.
Prime Minister Mottley highlighted the importance of expanding breadfruit production, alongside other non-traditional ventures such as mushroom cultivation.
“Breadfruit that we take for granted is a superfood,” she said. “I’ve spoken to the Ministry of Agriculture last year, to start identifying and preparing land for over 100 acres of breadfruit production, and that we should seek to partner also with our brothers and sisters in Guyana and Suriname to significantly expand breadfruit production. We saw what persons did with breadfruit during COVID-19, and now those products are readily available on supermarket shelves. I want to equally make the point that things that we would not traditionally have done, are now being done in Barbados.”
Barbados is already emerging as a growing exporter of breadfruit, meeting strong demand in the UK, US and Canada, often supplying thousands of kilograms weekly. The government hopes that the combination of training, land access, and innovation will further boost the country’s agricultural exports while supporting local food security.
Mottley also used the occasion to raise concerns over the national diet and its impact on public health.
She said: “We have a diabetes epidemic in this country, and if we do not change how we eat, we will continue to pay the price in increased costs; whether it is in amputations, which are way, way, way too high still, whether it is in kidney disease, which has exploded over the last few decades, whether it is in blindness, which most people do not associate with diabetes, but it’s very much a reality and a consequence of it. Or, whether it is in predisposition to other chronic NCDs that literally can affect our quality of life.”
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