Dear Editor,
There’s been a lot of talk lately about boosting agriculture in Sint Maarten. Ministers are talking about farming, people are sharing ideas on food security, and even a few small initiatives have popped up around the island. That’s all good. We need more of that. But we also need to be honest about one simple truth: there can be no farming, no real agriculture, without protecting the land first.
You can’t grow food on damaged soil. You can’t raise livestock if the water is polluted or if hillside development keeps washing away fertile topsoil every time it rains. You can’t talk about agriculture and ignore what’s happening to our natural areas. And right now, too many of those areas are being bulldozed, cleared, or neglected. That has to change.
We’ve seen other islands get serious about this. In places like St. Lucia and Grenada, there’s an understanding that forests, wetlands, and open spaces play a role in keeping land healthy and productive. They protect against floods, support pollinators, and keep the soil in place. Farmers in those countries work hand-in-hand with conservationists because they’ve learned that agriculture without nature just doesn’t work.
Here in Sint Maarten, we’ve let those lessons slip by us. We’ve allowed years of unchecked development, illegal dumping, and a lack of enforcement to break down the land we now say we want to farm. We’ve let invasive species run rampant, and we haven’t put in place the kind of long-term protections needed to safeguard what little natural space we have left.
That matters. Because farming doesn’t happen in a vacuum, you need healthy ecosystems around your crops to support growth. You need bees and butterflies and other pollinators to pollinate. You need trees and vegetation to hold water in the soil during dry spells and slow it down during heavy rains. Without those things, farming becomes expensive, fragile, and unsustainable.
It’s good that we’re talking about agriculture again. But let’s not forget what’s required to make it work. We need to start setting aside and protecting what little natural land we have left. We need to stop cutting into hillsides and filling in wetlands for quick profits. We need to put policies in place that protect our environment, and we need to enforce those policies, not just talk about them. And we need to understand that protecting nature isn’t separate from farming—it is in fact the first critical step.
Government support for agriculture must go hand-in-hand with a strong commitment to terrestrial conservation. If we keep building on every green space, if we keep ignoring erosion, pollution, and habitat destruction, there will be nothing left to grow on. A food-secure Sint Maarten needs more than greenhouses and tools; it needs healthy land and functioning ecosystems. And that requires real, intentional environmental protection.
Otherwise, we’re just planting seeds in sand. And no matter how good our intentions are, nothing grows from that.
Sincerely,
Tadzio Bervoets
