Business View Caribbean
5
Agriculture represents only about three percent of
GDP, and employs an equally small percentage of the
population. Yet, Tudor maintains that the food industry
in Barbados is more important than those numbers
would suggest. “We have an indigenous population
of 300,000, but we get 600,000 long-stay tourists,
and we also get 600,000 cruise ship tourists, a year.
So you can see that the food industry in Barbados is
much larger than it would first appear from the size of
the population, because you are providing food for a
million people a year, because of the tourism industry.
We have a food import bill of seven to eight hundred
million a year.”
Tudor believes that BADMC’s major focus on food inno-
vation can help to lower that amount and sees Barba-
dos, as, one day, being a net exporter of value-added
food products. “In the last year, we innovated about 15
products,” says King. “We’ve been able to commercial-
ize probably about half of those on a small scale, but
ultimately, what we believe is going to be most valu-
able for Barbados, is making the food innovation intel-
