Mauritius is at a unique historical opportunity: finally it is in a position to do something about its food insecurity. For the first time after its independence, no one seems to have any good ideas about what do with the land and, curiously enough, no one seems to be seriously considering using it to grow food.

Of course, the last time there was enthusiasm about growing food crops was in the 1960s and early 1970s. Back then, there was a rich debate about how to build the economy of the newly-independent state and there were men of vision such as Dr. Clovis Vellin (who pioneered young farmers’ clubs, and set up a model farm in his house in Beau-Bassin). The trouble was that back then, the land was being used to grow sugar which still ruled the roost, economically speaking. And so, these ideas could not get off the ground in a big way. Today, the situation is quite different: everyone knows that sugar is on the way out and that it does not make any economic sense that cane still blankets so much of our country. As the sugar industry looks to move to Africa, no one it seems, quite has an idea – or rather, a good idea – about what to do with the land in Mauritius. The obvious answer would of course be to grow food: it would reduce our dependency on food imports whose price can fluctuate wildly based on freight and fuel costs, it would help ease the pressure on our foreign currency reserves and most importantly, it would allow structurally unemployed youth to enter the workforce through agriculture. We are also helped by a climate and soil types that can be used to grow almost anything. There is a wider logic behind this: a country that does not grow at least part of the food it eats cannot survive. So far, so obvious.

That, however, is not what is happening. In 2018, for the first time since at least 2011, food production fell to below 100,000 tonnes and after peaking in 2014, the land used to grow food has also been progressively shrinking each year. One reason – perhaps the main one – this is happening is that ideology seems to be lagging behind reality. A few years ago, it was taken as a given that Mauritius would join the rest of the world in shedding ‘dirty’ manufacturing and agriculture and become a glitzy ‘service’ economy. That illusion has been shattered in the West where all the talk is about manufacturing, trade wars and protective tariffs. Within Mauritius too, the private sector has started talking about local production – a variant of the same import-substitution strategy that until recently was contemptuously viewed as a relic of the 1970s. The illusions are fast slipping away. But what is being done in the meantime, young Mauritians are still encouraged to become lawyers and accountants to work in an economy that soon will not be able to accommodate their skills, while successive governments in one of the most densely-populated countries in the world encourage land speculation and selling off land for real estate.

One can only imagine the frustration of the visionaries of the 1960s if they saw how myopia and a lack of imagination is causing the current generation to fritter away a god-send opportunity that they never had.

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