Hope for rich soil for rich crops not rich pockets
Coetivy to open up for food production
How come it’s only now we realise that Coetivy Island could feed Seychellois, as though we’ve just discovered a new island?Seychellois would have been excused for thinking this week that IDC (Islands Development Co.) has discovered a new island in Seychelles, by the way its Deputy CEO Christian Lionnet was talking on SBC after taking a group of farmers to look at potential for Agriculture on Coetivy Island.
Lionnet had accompanied the Island Chief Glenny Savy on an inspection tour to open the eyes of our local farming community to the potential of Coetivy, long lost abandoned after the demise of the Prawn Farm many years ago, after which some people walked off and left theproject coffers empty.
For many years Seychellois have expressed their concern that the islands run by IDC were not contributing enough to the very important food security of our country, preferring instead to dedicate several of our precious islands to high end tourism, often prioritizing foreigners.Granted, Coetivy has only recently been assigned to IDC, after spending many years in the portfolio of Seychellois corporate mogul, Mukesh Valabhji.But a report in the last few days by the National Assembly’s Islands Committee repeated the same regret –that our islands were not contributing enough to our development. It took Ramkalawan three years to come up with this piecemeal report.But fortunately, as in many other walks of life, Covid-19 has become the great teacher, and in this instance the great accelerator of action to take our food production to the next level.To the point where we’re now hearing Lionnet saying that the land on Coetivy has high organic content and could even lend itself to growing such important items like Onions and Garlic.
Then there is of course talk of reviving the production of Prawns in a less ambitious manner than in the first exercise run by Valabhji many years ago where most likely more money went into pockets than in prawn ponds.It is in this vein that The Independent hopes that in this much needed attempt to boost food production, the efforts of IDC results in richer soil and crops rather than richer people!!.
