As explained by the Ministry, the idea behind the initiative was to help provide a nutritional balance to families and a deterrence from toxic chemical use, harming persons and the environment in a time when maintaining healthy immune systems is priority, as part of the Ministry’s Rural Entrepreneurial Agricultural Project (R.E.A.P).
One assumes, of course, that the avoidance of toxic chemicals and the protection of immune systems are high on the Ministry’s list of priorities at all times and that leaving those considerations aside, the substantive purpose of the initiative is to seek to provide a food security option for persons whose incomes may have been depleted or even lost altogether in account of COVID-19-related job losses.
The Kitchen Garden Initiative, we are further told, “will see persons receiving assistance to acquire small garden tools, seeds, irrigation and other planting material to get their kitchen gardens going.”
Here, one assumes (again) that given the conditions that attend the COVID-19 emergency, this project will not be ‘decorated’ with elaborate and time-consuming procedures and that subject to checks to determine that the recipients of materials provided by the state, (again to quote Minister Yearwood-Adams), “will see persons receiving assistance to acquire small garden tools, seeds, irrigation and other planting material to get their kitchen gardens going.”
On the other hand there are those who may argue that such resources as are being allocated to the REAP Kitchen Garden project may, perhaps, more suitably be allocated to already established and efficiently-run farms and as a contractual quid pro quo, they commit to making produce available at affordable prices or in instances where means-tested rationale are applied, at no cost.
