No, this is not another aberration, another myth. Bad fi bad, things could never reach such an extreme. True, food prices are escalating. There is no indication that they will return to rock bottom any time soon. Because rising prices have become a way of life, it is no surprise that we can tek bad sinting mek joke.

As someone has said, if you want something enough, you will pay the price. I like a nice roast breadfruit myself, particularly if it is just a little bit ripe. When breadfruit season is on, “breadfruit appetite” is appeased. When it is not in season, then what all breadfruit supporters can do is hang on until the cycle of growth comes back again. As to the pricing, breadfruit is not exempt from the supply of demand. We’re not into breadfruit season at the moment, so we should not be surprised at the high costs. I’ve been introduced to a breadfruit which had reached $300. True-true! There were others on the market stall, which cost more. The vendor was not joking. Similar prices were all around the market. The breadfruit did not go unsold for long.

We have been promoting — and rightly so — the call for us as Jamaicans to grow Jamaican, eat Jamaican, we have embarked on culinary journeys which we had not known before. Jamaican cuisine gone abroad. At home, too, there was a time when yam, breadfruit, and other “food kind” would never be seen on the table of “better-class people”. Yam, pitater, breadfruit and the like were for those who could only afford the very cheapest of items. A friend of mine, a man of social standing, once invited someone who regarded himself as an even higher class to dine. Asked later by someone else what the experience was like, Mr High Class proclaimed, “We dined on coarse fare.” The joke lives on.

In the era of pounds, shilling and pence, when someone had to buy a breadfruit, the cost was paid for in a currency way at the bottom of the economy’s ladder. Today, it is not only interesting, but at times outright amusing to see the high social level where “poor people food kind” has reached — mackerel rundung, tun cornmeal, pigstail, stamp and go, etc, etc, are now culinary delicacies.

A breadfruit, which in past times could fetch a few pence (pennies), can show who rules the budget. How about a day when breadfruit makes the stock exchange? That might be a lickle joke, but who knows? Change is so rapid, we cannot ignore it. The price of Jamaican “food kind” is escalating and drastically for some items too.

Other produce reflected the reality of today. Ripe banana has been creating history — it seems — by the steep climb it makes each week. It is not unusual for one banana finger (as we call it) to be offered up for sale at $50. Per dozen? You ask. Don’t be ridiculous. One! One deggeh finger! You could kiss teet and walk away all you want, but if the need is urgent, check the rest of the market and be told that you’re getting a bargain — which could be true. Not everyone sticks to the same level.

I am torn in this matter of the ever-rising cost of food each week. As a consumer, it is heartening to see farmers making a comeback from being battered by drought at one time and flood the next. When things change, it is easy to forget the challenges which the farmers have faced, not only from the weather but the hazard of the tief, the praedial larcenists, who still believe they must reap where they do not sow.

So, on the one hand, I can understand the farmers’ need to be able to support his family from the proceeds of the marketing of his produce. He has to buy sugar, flour, rice and other items for the family table, and those costs increase unceasingly too. So, it is no point us, the consumers, beating down the farmer too. He is in the same boat as we are.

One of the leaders of the agricultural sector is asking us, the consumers, to be conscious of what the farming sector has to go through. The rising cost of items of production, fertiliser, tools, labour, etc, etc, all components necessary to make products harvest-ready. There are inescapable costs from the field to the market. Transportation, for instance, is by no means cheap.

Just for argument’s sake, I asked what would be the price for a nice yellow heart St Thomas breadfruit or a healthy, Trelawny yellow yam for instance? His response: “Costs vary, but the farmer has to keep going.” He wants a share in the prosperity, too.

One thing you can depend on, we Jamma people know when to add variety to spice up any situation. I have just been educated to the fact that one of the latest sing and dance craze on the corner is “Breadfruit”. You don’t have to wait for “roast and boil” again.

A CURSE ON MONTEGO BAY?

Curses come in old-time storybook. So what really is happening? Why is the Second City of Jamaica suffering a horrible outbreak of murder and mayhem? A lot is attributed to the lotto scam, but if that is so, what will it take to restore sanity to a place where the years of hard work and dedication to maintain a thriving community is being beaten up almost every day?

Some of the reports of cruelty, disdain for human life, could be regarded as “a curse”, for what else can it be? The good people of the Bay, whatever their financial or social standing, need to be rid of this plague. Something is seriously wrong. It will have to be faced and fixed. Montego Bay’s problem is the nation’s problem.

Barbara Gloudon is a journalist, playwright and commentator. Send comments to the Obsever or gloudonb@yahoo.com.