Book Description

St. Vincent is a green, rainy and rugged island of 133 square miles near the southern end of the Lesser Antilles between St. Lucia and the Grenadines. Dominated by both extinct and recently active volcanoes, only 30 percent of its surface is level enough for cropping. Although its soils are fertile, its population density of almost 2,000 per square mile of cropland makes the struggle for economic survival a strenuous one. The primary economy of the island is agriculture, and other economic activities are directed toward servicing that industry and the people who engage in it. Peasant and plantation production are in balance, and government sponsorship of small, controlled landholdings has been very successful. Subsistence production of ground provisions - tannia, eddoes, sweet potatoes, yams, cassava, etc. - provides a large portion of the food supply, and most of the animal protein consumption is supplied by the island's fisheries. The terraced fields of St. Vincent have an almost oriental appearance and are cultivated with almost oriental intensity. Export crops of $6,628,000 B.W.I. ($3.975,000 U.S.) were produced on 27,000 cultivated acres in 1959, an average of $246 per acre. Few of these acres are even moderately level, and it is unlikely that agriculture can be expanded very much. (Author).