Young People Urged to Do Their Part to Ensure Food Security

Jamaica’s youth are being encouraged to plant backyard gardens to ensure reliable food supply as the global crisis worsens.
Delivering the keynote address at the Clarendon 4-H Clubs Annual Parish Achievement Day and Expo at the Denbigh Showgrounds in the parish on March 11, Detective Corporal Dane Brown of the May Pen police, told the youngsters they were not too young to be a part of the initiative to ensure food security.
“If we are to have food security, we will have to return to the soil. We will have to be using up the space in our backyard, we’ll have to return to farming, we’ll have to set up a little patch…you are not too young to understand that there is a real problem in the world as it relates to food,” he stated.
He informed the students that an insufficient food supply would negatively affect the total population, leading to various problems, which would ultimately affect the country’s development.
“Where we do not have sufficient food to feed ourselves, then you, the children, will not be able to learn. There will be all kinds of problems such as malnutrition, you can’t learn. If we are going to have real food security, we are going to have to grow what we eat and eat what we grow,” he pointed out.
Several displays of agricultural produce, processed foods, and craft items were put on by the various schools and agencies which participated, including Ebony Park HEART Academy, the Coffee Industry Board, National Youth Service (NYS) and the Drug Abuse Secretariat.