(Contributed article by Mervin Mitchel) Yes, prices are indeed sky rocketing around the world and numerous countries are experiencing either hyperinflation or some other form of economic instability.
It is not unique to St. Lucia, nor does the conflict with Ukraine and Russia have anything to do with it, but that’s another story.
Yes, you are also right that Massy has been fleecing the St. Lucian consumer out of every cent they’ve got. SO WHAT?
Do you not tolerate the fleecing every time you go in to patronise the stores? St. Lucians are just as guilty and complicit to this extortion because they condone it, welcome it, and then complain about it. SO WHAT?
Maybe it’s time for St. Lucians to re-learn the skill of self-reliance and self-sufficiency. Maybe it’s time they look around, at all the fertile lands that are sitting idle around their homes and communities.
It’s time for St. Lucians to get to work producing their own food. Either reduce your dependence on supermarkets or stop relying on Massy to be your public pantry.
Have St. Lucians forgotten how to grow their own food and raise their own animals for meat? Or have they so completely fooled themselves into believing that agriculture is demeaning work? Please, lol, don’t make me laugh.
Guess what happens when you produce your own food? You have no food bill, but you do have an abundance of plenty. My fellow St. Lucians, that is how you achieve food security against an exploiter called Massy and against the tyranny of government.
That my fellow Lucians is freedom. To be dependent on foreign entities for food that we can produce locally is a sin. So don’t blame Massy, it’s only delivering punishment for your negligence.
What are you St. Lucians going to do when the EC dollar becomes worthless and you can’t buy a loaf of bread or a bag of sweet potatoes with the money? Are you going to eat the money or demand that the government step in and provide a solution?
Fools! The government created this problem to begin with. Now you want them to deliver a solution. Here we have the sheep crying wolf all day long at Massy, only to be slaughtered by the shepherd called government.
Ironic isn’t it? Open your eyes Lucians. The solution you seek must come from you, starting with the production at your household.
Will you start producing your own food today, or, are you going to continue to cry wolf? Well, we all know how that ends, don’t we?
No sh!t Sherlock
I do not feel that this writing has any substance to it. This should not make it to the pages of any online news. A stage 3 student could come up with a better essay. This boy has no clue about the REAL WORLD. An EFFECTIVE government would have put a stop to Massey ‘s illegal business practices years ago. But it did not happen under the UWP because Chastanet father still owns his shares under various guises. Or is that just a rumour? Boy go play with your marbles and learn to write. Don’t come here spouting nonsense when you lack understanding.
Its so easy to tell people produce your own food when you have the means to do so.
Oh reaaallly (in Jim Carrey’s voice). Like people don’t know that. One is able to grow when they have the means (land, skills, etc) to do so. Sorry to burst your bubble, you’re not the first to come to that conclusion.
Yes, Mervin. Please tell us more how average working class Lucians can eliminate their food bill by rearing livestock and growing crops despite not owning any land. We would love to learn all about how you saved up a down payment with the money you saved from growing spinach and tomatoes in your kitchen in the UK.
Seriously, I think you should abstain from making posts after one of your “enthusiastic weight lifting sessions” – clearly your brain was lacking in oxygen when you wrote this.
Where am I getting the land? Land going for $25 and $30 a square foot.
Well one of the best articles I read in this rag……and believe I have read many the worst and most notorious of them been Haiti’s True Curse I think it was by that Johncrow Rufus Basquette (I could be wrong) and a few that follow by the many contributing scoundrels. For year this supermarket has reap the sweat off the backs of St Lucians without impunity, and have built the wealth and empire for the very scoundrels amongst of us; to make matters worst they elected the fox to watch over the hen house. All of the above that you have stated is true; BUT let’s look into the situation at hand as it pertains to this blood sucker of the St Lucinan People. As far back as the late 80’s early 90 when things were not as bad, this blood sucker was given the exclusive rights to operate in St Lucia THERE WERE NO COMPETITION. Allen Chastanet JQ/Massy had the MONOPOLY PERMIT ON GROCERY IMPORT into the St Lucia for years, WHY WAS THIS ALLOWED ?? If my memory served me right, there was another chain that was trying to infiltrate the market, I believe they operate a few markets in Barbados and they were vigorously opposed from doing business here, like wise they were trying to establish fast food outlets here and were blocked and opposed by a certain Family who currently has the franchise license for KFC and others I spoke to the opposed CEO myself on a flight from Barbados to St Lucia so I know what I am talking about ( you see why I hate them I know their track record). The Honorable Luis Farrakhan once stated “who feeds you owns you”. Right now food security is one of the biggest treats facing small island states, until we as a people start growing what we need and eat what we grow we will always be a dependency and at mercy of others who cares nothing about us except the depth of our pockets. I plant everything, I really don’t go their supermarkets for anything if I really don’t need to or just to pay a bill once in a while. We must revamp our agriculture it’s critical. The emphasis of agriculture must be taught in schools, back in the day we had the school farm , the 4H club these were prudent emphasis on the needs and benefits of agriculture, with todays technologies the yields can be great with minimum effort, and you don’t have to put on your water boots anymore Whomsoever feeds us owns us, support your own buy St Lucian big up yourself Niles South Well is doing well since it’s inception I know they bad mind you and try to fight you stay strong buddy.
Drink your protein shake and mind your business
@Choops … your comment makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, OUR government should be encouraging the population to be more self-sufficient, and self reliant. I only found out a few months ago, that SLU used to grow its own rice, in Vieux Fort. Now – on the other, other hand, SLU has a huge food import bill, which really could be reduced. Realistically, there is A LOT of food wastage in SLU, which should not be. Remember when Union Agricultural Station had “fruit orchards”? But was it “sustainable” enough to produce agro processed foods and other goodies? NO! Unfortunately, that failed due to government mismanagement (again, no plans of maintenance).
What I am trying to point out, is SLU CAN PRODUCE it’s own agro-processed foods – but our series of government administrations (from since the 1950’s) has failed us miserably!! Not only in agriculture, but in a lot of self sustaining day to day living. SLU is way behind!
One might say: “But we have Baron Foods doing that.” Baron Foods IMPORTS every grain of dried seasoning they put together to put on the grocery shelves, and yet still garner awards and prizes for that!!
SLU needs to wake up, and smell the proverbial coffee! And my take on the article? At least it has us saying what is on our mind – but I do not agree with his/her story.
All this stupid long comment about owning monopoly. this should be ILLEGAL IN SAINT LUCIA IN THE NAME OF FAIR COMPETITION. No company should have a monopoly under the laws of Saint Lucia. Better take massey to court and let it play out in the whole high court and outside . and while doing that OTHER SUPERMARKETS MUST BE ALLOWED TO OPERATE HERE!!!! you politicians too FORKING LAZY to do the RIGHT THING!!! There is nothing to be gained legally by Massy monopoly. KICK OUT FORKING MASSEY NOW!!!
And further … I have to agree with St Lucian HIghgrade (for once). Only thing is Mr Highgrade, I WILL NEVER FORGET when in 1997, KDA made the statement that St Lucia will make Tourism its number one industry, and that “Bananas are dead!” When I heard that statement, my first thought was: “What about agriculture? That industry is the backbone of ALL nations.”
The two MAJOR industries on this planet Earth are: FOOD AND CLOTHING! The rest come after. For a politician (or a “politricktion”) to make such a statement – is a DEATH KNELL to the country. Do the math.
KDA and the SLP started this s**t!!
The information provided here is not new, but is sensible. So why aren’t we following? We are quick to find excuses instead of potential solutions. Yes, many persons may not have the yard space for a mini farm, but there are things that can be grown in pots like seasoning and herbs. There are things that can be grown in tires. I saw a video of this guy who grew potatoes in a sack. You may not be able to grow much, but you grow what you can and maybe start a barter system with your neighbors, that way everyone grows something different. The solutions are not going to just appear, we have to be interested enough and creative.
Good piece of writing. There will comes day, sooner than we think when we will have the money and will not be able to buy anything with it. When we will run to the mountain and ask the mountain to hide us. These things must come to pAss. For those of us who believe in such let’s keep the faith. God had given us the land let’s use it wisely. For those who believes otherwise may god touch your hearts and draw you closer to him and his words. God loves you. Peace and love
Above all being said name any Massy workers that put a gun to anyone’s head and force them to go shop at Massy? For me Massy should increase price by 500%. Lucian stupid to the core. Why go spend money for over process food when you have proper soil to plant and eat. What is wrong with eating greenfig, dasheen, yam etc, etc. Sometimes i laugh when i see people coming out with bags and bags of stuff from Massy, Dax, Unitmart, Delly’s. We bring shame upon ourselves thats all i have to say.
Community gardening.
I know it’s a foreign concept for black people who have been told to tear down their fellow neighbour and constantly complain and never work with their fellow man but it is the solution if you do not have the land.
Most of us have land inherited that is just sitting idly in the countryside. Especially those block-sitting ne’er-do-wells in the ghettos who rather smoke marijuana all day instead of picking up a shovel. God knows we’ve tried to make them come work on farms but by the time they pick up two shovels of dirt they’re wheezing and reaching for a blunt.
With community gardening you ask your neighbours to loan out unused portions of their land and you till it and plant food in the ground. All for free. The amount of 20 and 30 somethings who have private vehicles on the road, the money that went into those vehicles could sustain a farm easily.
And if you’re one of those black people who can’t work cooperatively with their fellow black man or you can’t motivate yourself unless it feels like you doing the wrong thing their is plenty of land out there to squat on and start growing your farm.
The guy didn’t factor in a-lot of things. Like you said the land is an issue, it takes approximately 2.6 acres of land to feed one person per year. A five acre block cost $200,000.00. Once you start producing on such a scale agricultural inputs are needed to ensure a successful harvest. The labour becomes another factor unless one decides to quit their day job.
Mr. Mervin should know that as it stands we have no economy of scale, high cost of production, reduction in production due to climate change and an incompetent Extension Unit. The MOA has a back yard garden project that hardly gets publicity.
Well said.. we need another large supermarket chain to compete with Massy. Why is there a monopoly on food.
Thanks for all the replays. He did say government created the problem.
Agricultural land is way much cheaper than this
This article is very surface level, nothing novel or interesting
Re your comments.Did you know that we had many supermarkets in St Lucia before Massey? It’s people like you and the rest of your friends and family that never supported them.Most of you stole from then and and build your home’s send your kids to schools in foreign lands and today you are complaining about hardships.. unfortunately your children and their families must pay for what you did it’s called karma.Stop biting the hands that feeds you.. Massey imports most of the goods They vend so they must make a profit.. Stop complaining and be more creative without stealing..an island without commonsense.. Stop blaming others for your misfortune.. please contact the errors…
Re your comments.Did you know that we had many supermarkets in St Lucia before Massey? It’s people like you and the rest of your friends and family that never supported them.Most of you stole from then and and build your home’s send your kids to schools in foreign lands and today you are complaining about hardships.. unfortunately your children and their families must pay for what you did it’s called karma.Stop biting the hands that feeds you.. Massey imports most of the goods They vend so they must make a profit.. Stop complaining and be more creative without stealing..an island without commonsense.. Stop blaming others for your misfortune.. please contact the errors…
@ Allison shut it!!! since when we had so many supermarkets? NB: a road shop is not a supermarket! you too dunce! and if they steal from you, better blame yourself. hire good employees, pay more, mind your business at the work place and dont leave your business and go out all the time and cut style like you forever boss. maybe then the business would have a fair chance!
Raty.! Typical ST Lucian you are! full of hate, Stay in your filthy mind and eat what what you Shit and remain hungry and angry..
Such a great statement. Let’s go back to our kitchen gardens, and eating local
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
and vengeance those take advantage on your people.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver your people to pay less
for more.
For God who knows the heart of man, knows the greedyness of man-
Did not teach us :
Give us every day our daily bread ;
but ‘teach us’, give us today our daily bread.
For everything is by prayers,supplications and thanksgivig and praise submit to God through Jesus Christ.
When you sell your country’s citizenship to people who loathe Black people and you are a majority Black country, you get shallow or stupid posts on wise ideas. Because your “new” Lucians just hear the discussions really concerned born natives are having and write a shallow puff piece and then maybe use another fake name to let out their real motive…dissing those they see as “low IQ Black people.” And of course asking them to normalize illegality — so they can turn ’round and criticize them later for it — by telling Looshans go to squat on somebody’s land. As if Lucians not doing enough of that yet. These people probably like Zeigy have a clear target in mind of some striving Lucian they are jealous of or have a ton of racist animosity towards, and want to be sure they have nothing, so instigating people to go squat on their land. Because your Zeigy’s, your Canadian Superstars and so on, they cannot sleep knowing there are Black people who do not meet their stereotypes of lazy, low IQ people. See how that one mention community gardening? That is a name used in Canada. In England those shared gardens are called Allotments. The last round of murder and mayhem maybe did not get their target, so they are back at it by another route. St. Lucians, especially Black ones, open your eyes. Yes, by all means we need to grow more of what we eat. Bananas are not bad. But beware of making every smiling Johnny-come-lately your king. These maybe the same types that are murdering your students overseas because they are brilliant, not even showy, just naturally bright and the supremacists cannot stand to see theyselves are not the real superstar in the room. Don’t be gullible peeps.
You cant blame Massy they are there purely for profit. It’s about time government put things in place to ensure investors dont take advantage of the people of this country otherwise this will continue. It started with S and S then came cheriki and it hasnt ended. Yes we want jobs but not slave labour
What? 2.6 acres to feed one person in a year? Were you high when you spat out that random thought? Do you know what an acre of land looks like? You can feed a single person for a year in most people’s backyards. Christ, some people are just closed minded and too resistant to any idea where you have to do work.
I did not even have the choice of going to Massy or the market this afternoon. My Government paid salary was not at 1st National Bank. What is going on? Is it because of the bank strike or government not paying on time? I
What are you saying? I’m free to criticize black people. Everything I said in my comment is because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Yes, there are hard working black people but they are few and far between. When was the last time you heard a song on our local airwaves that was uplifting or spoke about reward through industriousness? It’s a set of idle songs. Now here you are trashing community gardening and just as I stated, you see it as some foreign concept impossible to exist among black people. Well you are wrong. Black people need to cooperate with their fellow man to achieve their goals. If you don’t want to call it community gardening then call it working with your district representative to secure an area of land to grow plants. I’m free to criticize black people. All we do is blame white bogey men for our predicament. The perfect excuse to sit and wait for other races to solve our problems. Well we’ll be waiting into the next millennium if we don’t kick that bad habit. No race is going to sacrifice their comfort to help another race go forward. And as black people are set to be the most populous race on the planet by 2030 we best learn to work together to harness strength in our numbers or just end up becoming the next low-skilled, high-labour, low-paid workers in the world.
Who this “we” you talking about? You are not us, you are a great pretender who taking the ideas, stealing the ideas of a black person, and trying to act as if you for us. St. Lucians always had kitchen gardens and a coudmein spirit; better let them explore why maybe that has become less common once we got taken in by outsider schemes for poverty eradication and feminist liberation. Know it alls like you don’t seem to know this one thing; how you can encourage people when your starting point is always against them with a barrage of racial criticism; just like your Chas and your alias shinning star. And that’s the thing that bothers your kind the most: If you are not able to convince black people to kill all their babies and marry their men with their men (and stop producing babies or make it too expensive for ordinary people to do so) like Westerners want everyone to do in the name of being progressive, the race you all oppress and hate for so long will outnumber you all. And will dim your shine with their more innate intelligence and innovativeness when they not being enslaved and colonized by the Great Deceivers. We learn our lessons and can see through your type that all now so probably working to regime change Pip. On the one hand you trying to sound like you are “we” but on the other hand “hard working black people are few and far between.” We know you stah and why you are here with your well known prejudice against Black people and simpleton reasoning about their problems. AKA it’s all their fault and only their fault. If only they worked harder, like they had to do when the massa whip was on their back, everything will be alright for them. Go home and grow up your high achiever children by dumping a heap of insults and superiority attitudes on them every day and then come back and tell us how great they become.
Garfield you not a smart cat. You should have asked government co-workers of yours who are at different banks if they had the money come in. Then you come and give us that government story online.
This article has a condescending tone to it. Do you think writer, that we do not know it is better to plant and grow as opposed to buying food from Massy? It is simply not possible for everyone to do so. Massy has without remorse or concern indescriminately increased prices on things that didn’t need a price increase. For example a chocolate covered Digestive used to be $0.50. It is now $0.75. What is the justification for a 50% price increase in that item? They have done it on many many items but with small items like these under the dollar mark it’s hard to tell the difference but the differences add up. And that is dishonest to say the least.
All you’ve done is react to my comments. What is YOUR solution to progress the African race?
I’m going to make your answer a little harder by issuing a challenge. You don’t get to offer a solution where black people beg for hand outs. Three, two, one…go!