Before the pandemic, the Bahamas imported nearly 90% of its food. Agriculture contributed less than 1% of GDP and employed roughly 2% of the workforce — figures that tell only part of the story.
On Long Island, a farmer named Bernard Knowles, one of the “Rowdy Boys” who run Barefoot Creek Ranch, moves through the morning with his sheep and quail. He and his brothers Barry and Ben raise chickens, ducks, goats, and pigs on free-range pasture. They grow papaya, sugar apple, and figs. They do it because their family has always done it, and because the food they produce feeds their community. He is not in the GDP statistics. He is part of something harder to measure: a quiet, stubborn tradition of self-reliance that persists across the Out Islands, even as the country imports the vast majority of what it eats.
This article is for travelers who want to understand that tradition — who visit the Bahamas and wonder why the grocery shelves tell a different story than the kitchen gardens they glimpse from the road. It is also for anyone curious about how food sovereignty, cultural identity, and ecological constraint intersect in a place where the soil is thin, the sun is constant, and the pride runs deep.
The quiet pride Out Island farmers take in growing their own food is rooted in a long history of subsistence living, made more urgent by the country’s near-total dependence on imports. That pride is not a rejection of modernity — it is a lived assertion that feeding yourself and your neighbors matters, even when the government invests millions in hydroponic farms and egg-processing facilities. The nuance is this: the same farmers who take deep satisfaction in their banana groves and goat pens also struggle with poor soil, high fertilizer costs, and no local soil-testing labs. The pride is real; the challenges are equally real.
Farming across the Out Islands: A quick-reference comparison
No two Out Islands farm the same way. The table below sketches the major differences and shared challenges across the islands mentioned most often in agricultural reports and farm profiles.
| Island | Known for | Key crops | Notable farms | Primary challenge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Long Island | Mutton & banana farming | Bananas (7+ varieties), papaya, sugar apple, figs, avocado, citrus, benny | Barefoot Creek Ranch, Green Life Farms, Farquharson organic farm | Rocky, limestone-based soil; limited irrigation |
| Cat Island | Sheep raising, small-scale crops | Bananas, plantains, tropical fruit | Small family plots, government-supported distribution | Salty ground, lack of animal manure |
| Exuma | Livestock and poultry | Sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, eggs | Government-tractor recipients | No local soil testing labs |
| Abaco | Post-hurricane recovery farming | Pineapple, papaya, mango, cassava | Convoy of Hope training sites | Soil salinity from storm surge |
| Grand Bahama | Home gardens, expanded after training | Mixed vegetables, tropical fruit | Grace Pinder’s garden, workshops | High fertilizer prices |
| Andros | BAMSI campus, research and education | Celery, coconut, preserves, bottled products | BAMSI food processing facility | Scaling from subsistence to commercial |
What stands out across these islands is a pattern: farmers grow what the land tolerates, rely on family labor, and sell or share within their immediate community. The government’s recent push to expand commercial agriculture — including the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2025 to build five hydroponic farms — exists alongside this older, more personal system.
The roots of Out Island farming
Subsistence farming in the Out Islands predates the tourism economy by centuries. Enslaved people and their descendants grew provisions on small plots — yams, okra, pigeon peas, and later bananas and plantains — often on land too rocky for the plantation cash crops. After emancipation, many formerly enslaved families settled on the same land and continued the practice. The tradition of growing your own food became bound up with freedom and self-determination.
On Long Island today, that continuity is visible. Antonio Cartwright runs Green Life Farms in Hard Bargain, raising sheep, goats, and pigs. On his property stands a well built by enslaved people in the 1800s, dug by hand into the limestone. The well is not a tourist attraction; it is a working water source that connects the present farm to the land’s earlier history. Cartwright’s neighbor Thyrone Turnquest grows bananas on “ripped ground” — land cleared and broken by hand — using banana suckers that grow to full bloom and are harvested by the bunch.
A common outsider misconception is that Bahamians don’t farm because the country imports so much food. In fact, Out Island farming has never stopped — it has simply remained invisible to visitors who see only the resorts and the imported supermarket shelves. The tradition is alive, but it is small-scale, family-based, and rarely counted in national statistics.
Pedro Cartwright and his mother Pearl Cartwright have invested heavily in banana farming over many years, growing varieties that include Chiquita, sugar banana, Hog, Dwarf, Apple, William Hybrid, and Jamaican. The diversity of banana cultivars on a single island tells its own story: each variety was brought by a different family, traded among neighbors, and adapted to the local soil. This is not industrial agriculture. It is a living seed bank, maintained by memory and shared across generations.
What the land provides
The soil across much of the Bahamas is rocky, limestone-based, and naturally salty. University of Missouri Extension specialists who traveled to the islands in 2022 as part of a Convoy of Hope Farmer-to-Farmer program funded by USAID found no soil-testing labs, limited animal manure, and high fertilizer prices. They recommended raised-bed gardens, creative composting, hydroponic systems, and importing soil where possible. But they also noted that certain crops grow easily in the native conditions: pineapple, papaya, mango, tamarind, soursop, apples, cassava, bananas, and plantains.
These are the crops that appear again and again in Out Island farm gardens. On Long Island, Iris Farquharson and her daughter Judith Farquharson-Rigby run an organic farm and interactive garden tour in Deadman’s Cay. They grow lemongrass (called fever grass locally), passion fruit, coco plums, and tamarind alongside the usual bananas and citrus. Judith creates hand-painted signs and sculptures from discarded items, labeling each fruit and flower. The garden is both a food source and a work of art — a place where the farmer’s pride is expressed in the care of the space itself.
At Barefoot Creek Ranch, the Knowles brothers raise free-range lambs that stay close to their mothers. A female pig nicknamed “Mama Sue” lives in a pig crawl. The ranch includes an inland pond where ducks and quail roam freely. Eggs are produced for local consumption and sold to neighbors. The entire operation is small enough that one person can describe every animal by name and habit.
If you visit Long Island and want to see this farming tradition firsthand, the Farquharson organic farm in Deadman’s Cay offers guided garden tours. Call ahead — the farm is a working family operation, not a commercial attraction, and availability depends on the season and their daily tasks.
Government support and new directions
The government of the Bahamas has made food security a stated priority. Prime Minister Philip Davis announced in 2025 that the agriculture budget would increase from $25 million to $35 million, with support to farmers rising by 200%. The Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Resources, led by Minister Jomo Campbell, has launched several initiatives: the National Layer and Piggery Programme distributed over 10,000 chicks and 3,000 adult chickens; the Golden Yolk Project is a $9 million investment in pullet buildings, dual layer houses, and an egg-processing facility capable of handling 8,000 eggs per hour; tractors have been sent to Cat Island, Exuma, and Abaco for land preparation.
At the same time, the Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute (BAMSI) has expanded its academic mission, enrolling 302 students and forming partnerships with Prairie View A&M, Athens State, and Stanford University. BAMSI has assisted with juicing and packing celery juice, bottled tomatoes, coconut water, and preserves. Three food processing facilities are planned for New Providence, Eleuthera, and Cat Island. The new Centre for Food and Nutrition Security will serve as a multi-disciplinary technical hub, leading initiatives in urban farms, community food hubs, seed banks, and climate-smart agriculture training.
Yet the gap between government ambition and on-the-ground reality remains wide. The same budget address that celebrated 26.3% growth also noted that the Bahamas spends $18 million annually on imported pork and pork products. The abattoir requires upgrades. The feeder farm road program operates on a $200,000 budget. A national agricultural census — the first in years — is planned in partnership with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, with the goal of providing updated data on land usage, labor, farm size, and environmental impact.
Context & comparison: Tradition meets policy
The tension between small-scale subsistence farming and government-led agricultural modernization is not unique to the Bahamas. But it takes a specific form here because of the islands’ geography, soil limitations, and history of import dependence. The table below compares the traditional Out Island approach with the emerging government-supported model.
| Attribute | Traditional Out Island farming | Government-supported commercial farming |
|---|---|---|
| Scale | Family plots, 1-5 acres | Hydroponic farms, multi-acre operations |
| Labor | Family members, neighbors | Hired workers, BAMSI graduates |
| Primary crops | Bananas, plantains, tropical fruit, sheep, goats, chickens | Eggs, pork, hydroponic vegetables, processed foods |
| Market | Local consumption, neighbors, community | Hotels, resorts, supermarkets, export |
| Soil management | Raised beds, composting, imported soil | Hydroponics, controlled environments, imported growing media |
| Knowledge system | Oral tradition, family knowledge, generational | Formal education (BAMSI), international partnerships |
| Funding | Self-financed, remittances | Government budget ($35M), international grants |
| Primary challenge | Poor soil, high fertilizer costs, no testing labs | Infrastructure gaps, scaling logistics, competing with imports |
Both systems face a shared obstacle: the Bahamas imports nearly 90% of its food, a figure that has held steady for decades despite repeated government pledges to reduce it. The tourism collapse during the pandemic showed how fragile that dependence can be — when imports plummeted, the local food system was not large enough to fill the gap. Convoy of Hope, the faith-based nonprofit that partnered with University of Missouri Extension specialists to train farmers in 2022, reported that it was the only organization offering agriculture training across the island chain at the time.
Grace Pinder, a farmer in Freeport, Grand Bahama, expanded her home garden after attending the MU Extension training and began holding workshops for other growers. Her story is a rare example of a single training program producing a ripple effect — but it also highlights how much depends on individual initiative when no formal extension system exists locally.
- Out Island farming is a living tradition of subsistence and community self-reliance, not a relic of the past.
- The government’s $35M agriculture budget and new hydroponic farms represent a genuine shift in policy, but the gap between national plans and on-the-ground realities remains large.
- The diversity of banana varieties on Long Island — and the knowledge of how to grow them — is a form of cultural and biological heritage that no government program can replicate quickly.
- The quiet pride of farmers like the Knowles brothers, the Cartwrights, and the Farquharsons is not a rejection of development. It is a separate, older system of value that operates alongside — and sometimes in tension with — the new agricultural economy.
Questions readers ask about Out Island farming
Why do Out Island farmers keep growing food when the country imports so much?
Tradition, self-reliance, and taste all play a role. Many families have grown their own food for generations and prefer the flavor of homegrown produce. Economic necessity also matters — fresh food on the islands is expensive when it has to be imported.
Can visitors buy fresh produce from Out Island farms?
In some cases, yes. Farms like Barefoot Creek Ranch and the Farquharson organic farm sell eggs, fruit, and vegetables locally. But there is no formal farm-to-table distribution system. The best approach is to ask at your accommodation or visit a local market.
Is the government’s push for commercial farming changing the Out Island tradition?
This is still debated. Some farmers welcome the equipment and training. Others are skeptical that hydroponic farms and egg-processing facilities will benefit small family operations. The national agricultural census planned for 2025 may provide the first reliable data on how the two systems interact.
What crops grow best in Bahamian soil?
Pineapple, papaya, mango, tamarind, soursop, cassava, bananas, and plantains are the most reliable. The soil is rocky, limestone-based, and salty, so many vegetables require raised beds, compost, or imported soil to thrive.
How has Hurricane Dorian affected farming in the Out Islands?
Hurricane Dorian devastated farms on Abaco and Grand Bahama in 2019. The storm surge salinated soil, destroyed buildings, and killed livestock. Recovery has been slow, with organizations like Convoy of Hope providing training and the government distributing new chicks and equipment.
What the quiet pride reveals
The Out Island farmer who grows bananas on ripped ground, raises sheep on free-range pasture, and names every animal on the farm is not a statistical outlier. He or she is the keeper of a system that has fed Bahamian families for centuries — a system that exists alongside, and largely invisible to, the tourism economy and the import-dependent supermarkets. The quiet pride is not about being self-sufficient in a national sense. It is about being able to feed your own table, share with your neighbor, and pass the knowledge on to the next generation. In a country that imports 90% of its food, that is not a small thing. It is a form of resistance, a practice of cultural continuity, and a daily affirmation that the land — even the thin, rocky, salty land — still has something to give.
For more on the values that shape life in the Out Islands, see Family Above All: Exploring the Core Values of Bahamian Culture.
Sources and further reading
ZNS Bahamas. “2025-26 Budget Communication Outlines Government’s Initiative for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security Throughout the Bahamas.” 2025. 🔗
Farm Progress. “Partners Rebuild Agriculture in Bahamas.” 2022. 🔗
ZNS Bahamas. “The Country’s Agriculture Sector Seeing a Boom in Growth.” 2025. 🔗
The Bahamian Project. “Long Island Farming.” 2022. 🔗
Related reading on IslandHopperGuides
Bahamian Foodways: A Delicious Journey Through History and Heritage — The broader story of how Bahamian food traditions have been shaped by geography, trade, and migration.
Sweet Jams & Seaside Stories: Bahamian Culinary Traditions Beyond Conch Salad — A look at the preserves, baked goods, and home-cooked meals that define Bahamian home kitchens.
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