Newton Urges Public to Return to Backyard Farming
Senator Lamin Newton, the Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP) caretaker for All Saints East and St. Luke, is urging residents to return to backyard farming, warning that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the country’s vulnerability to food shortages and overreliance on imports.
Speaking on The Morning Point programme, Newton said the pandemic demonstrated how quickly global supply chains can collapse, leaving small island states at risk.
“COVID taught us a very, very, very damning lesson,” Newton said. “No one would have ever thought, in their wireless imagination, that the world would have come to a complete stop. But we saw it. We lived it.”
He said the experience underscored the importance of local food production, noting that sustenance is fundamental to survival.
“The first and most important thing in life is sustenance,” Newton said. “And if you can’t do that, you cannot survive, you cannot exist.”
Newton said many people initially embraced backyard farming during the pandemic but abandoned the practice once normal conditions returned.
“Everybody wanted a backyard garden when it was COVID,” he said. “Since then, that has just gone to sleep. Nobody wants to do it anymore because we’re back in a state of comfort.”
He warned that comfort could again be disrupted by global events and urged the public to take proactive steps.
“With all the geopolitics that we’re seeing now and what’s happening across the world, you never know,” Newton said. “We should find ourselves in a place where local produce should be able to sustain us a month or two until things get back to normal.”
Newton encouraged residents to use whatever land is available to them, even small backyard spaces, to grow food.
“Get a piece of land, even if it’s in your backyard, produce something,” he said.
He said food security should be viewed as a matter of survival rather than convenience.
“A lot of people laughed,” Newton said, recalling earlier calls for local production. “However, the first and most important thing in life is sustenance.”
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