Opinion Article by BEST’s Executive Director, Kim Smith. The Royal Gazette, April 10, 2025.

In recent months, anyone buying eggs, or baked goods containing eggs, has suffered a shock. At one point last month, the price of a dozen eggs from a local brand importing them from the United States was going up by a dollar a week.

While the spiralling cost of eggs has received considerable attention, this is not the first time this year that our supermarket shelves have been affected by events overseas, and we are only in April.

In January, when wildfires ripped their way through parts of Southern California with tragic human consequences, they also destroyed significant amounts of the state’s agriculture. This led to bare berry shelves in some of our local supermarkets. There have also been severe shortages of bananas in recent years.

These events are reminders of what can happen when Bermuda is too reliant on food imports. The spread of pests and disease, as well as anticipated impacts from climate change, mean that such events will not only happen again, but are likely to become more frequent.

Of course, Bermuda’s food imports aren’t impacted only by avian flu and the weather. Geopolitical events are also likely to continue to push up imported food prices, in particular the threatened US tariffs, and the US Ships Act, which would impose huge docking fees on Chinese-built or Chinese-flagged vessels, such as Bermuda Container Line’s MV Oleander. While work is being done behind the scenes to mitigate this risk, work also needs to be done to ensure we have adequate supplies of nutritional necessities at home, such as eggs, to minimise the impact of these types of events.

The Government has recently highlighted the importance of food security and has pledged to take action to support this. In its 2025 election platform, the Progressive Labour Party stated its commitment to “promote the 100 per cent utilisation of arable land” and to incorporate food production “into select underutilised public spaces for food security, community gardens and hubs”.

Read more here: https://www.royalgazette.com/opinion-writer/opinion/article/20250410/save-open-spaces-to-grow-our-own-food/