Every day we hear how there is an economic crisis brewing, but none of our leaders seem to have a plan as to how to ride out the storm. For too long, Jamaicans have lived the lie that says 'a foreign lifestyle is a better lifestyle', so we abandon our local foods in favour of foreign food, we stop walking because 'first-world people don't walk', and we drive fast on pothole filled roads because 'developed people drive fast up there'. The net result is an unhealthy, confused, lazy population destined to be a strain on our ailing health sector with 'First-World' ailments.

In The Gleaner of March 4, reporter Tyrone Reid had an article on the latest fad, 'Getting old'. I would bet that those centenarians reached their ripe old age with a simple formula; eat what you grow and grow what you eat. No talk of fast food or fast cars for those Jamaicans, just hard work and prayer. Yet, we teach our youth that becoming a farmer is not an achievement and that it is hot, sweaty, dirty work not suited for someone with good passes in CXC or with a university degree.

So our young leave school with their 'subjects' with nothing to do, while our adults complain about the rising cost of foreign goods. Whatever happened to the concept of 'self-reliance'? Why do we need to import inferior quality goods? Now we want to use suspect fertiliser because it comes from 'foreign' (just like mad cows disease)!

We can feed ourselves and put idle hands to work, but not without true cultural reform. Both political parties are guilty of promoting an alien culture on the people while giving lip service to our indigenous culture. The farmer should be king and the primary means to getting out of our economic mess. He should not be portrayed as an ex-slave etching out a meagre existence from the land, but as a modern technologist/entrepreneur using the latest tools to grow abundant produce.

productive nation

For decades we have squandered our opportunities to be a productive nation, preferring instead to follow the 'developed world' in the rampant pursuit of consumerism. Time has finally caught up with us and is telling us that we cannot afford a fancy stimulus programme. Therefore, the farmer and the manufacturer should be king, not the financial wizard or the distributors and retailers of foreign goods and services.

I am, etc.,

RUDY ROBINSON

rudyrob@gmail.com

Montego Bay