Six years ago on the prerequisites of good governance he had written; “we are in serious trouble; nothing meaningful can happen with government, because without money nothing happens anywhere.”

Aside from Ivan and Emily there was chronic mismanagement: the agro-economy was in ruins, the banana revenue earner is long dead, cocoa is dying and waiting to be carried out-products that in 1974 were major earners.

Today, 2008 it is relevant to say that a large percentage of our land is lying uncultivated, unmaintained, uncared for!!!

Part reason is that in the new global environment the competition with external producers makes our farmers find it very hard to survive.

“As against 1973 when we had a thriving food sector, there is bare little left; no lime juice, we exported cocoa in 1974 now we importing coconut milk in cans from London;  once we did a thriving trade with Trinidad and Tobago in yard fowls, eggs, exotic fruits as guava, tamarind, sapodillas, sour sop and more.

“They said coconut was bad for us so we closed down the cottage industries of oil and milk for home consumption and while the NNP was making promises of 12,000 jobs the food sector was going to waste”.

There is a world shortage of foods, of arable land-the major problem Benjy says will soon not be the cost of oil but the cost of food, globally.

Today we are importing lettuce, tomatoes, celery, carrot, and even bottled water as our own Glenelg water faces free trade competition. Our last ace up the sleeve is the remittances factor.

“The one development since 1974 is remittances from the Diaspora and Grenadians who are returning from Aruba, Curacao T&T, England the US and Canada. It is now our highest foreign exchange earner.