It is that time of the year for the Virgin Islands Agriculture & Food Fair festival. The theme for this year’s 2025 Agrifest is “From Soil to Soul, Nurturing Virgin Islands Agriculture.” I have written two articles to be published in the Agriculture & Food Fair book. They are “The History and Potential of Tropical Fruits as an Industry in the U.S. Virgin Islands” and “The Protection of Soil and Prime Agricultural land in the U.S. Virgin Islands.”
The articles are too long to be published in the newspaper with citations, etc. But both articles are critically important to educate the public about food security in the Virgin Islands. I will write a narrative of the history of fruits and the potential fruits have as a major industry in Virgin Islands agriculture. When the Amerindians migrated to the Virgin Islands from South America, between the second and third millennia, wild fruits were part of the landscape of these islands.
These fruits were gathered by the indigenous people of the islands, who used them for food, ritual, and capturing wild animals by using fruits as bait. By the time Christopher Columbus encountered the islands and claimed St. Croix for Spain during his second voyage to the so-called New World on Nov. 14, 1493, the island was “Well cultivated and well populated,” as reported by one of the crew that landed at Salt River Bay west bank.
Some of the wild native fruits that were once in abundance to the first inhabitants of these islands were West-Indian locust (Hymenaea courbaril), wild guava (Eugenia pseudopsidium), cocoplum (Chrysobalanus icaco), swamp apple or pond apple (Annona glabra), and sweetpea or pomshock, or Spanish oak as known by Crucians (Inga laurina). These fruits are now rare in the Virgin islands, particularly on the island of St. Croix.
During the early colonial history of St. Croix, there was a large variety of tropical fruit trees growing wild, especially on the northwestern, west, and central valleys in streambed banks across the island. Many of these fruit trees were planted by enslaved Africans and the movement of wildlife such as bats, birds, and deer. C.G.A. OLdendorp was a Moravian missionary who visited the Danish West Indies from 1767 to 1768. He was an inspector for the Moravian churches who gathered information and interviewed both free and enslaved people for the purpose of compiling a report on the progress of evangelizing the enslaved in the Danish West Indies.
In his report, he mentioned, “the wild bush provides him with a quantity of fruit, which costs him nothing more than the time that he spends to gather.” According to the late George A. Seaman, it was common practice for the planting of fruit trees to occur along “guts” and streams for conservation purposes and cultural uses. Today, you can still find some large fruit trees, particularly mangoes, growing along stream banks.
From 1854 to 1923, an American botanist named Charles F. Millspaugh, who wrote Flora of the Island of St. Croix, mentioned estates on the north side of St. Croix with extensive fruit plantations. In 1895, Estate Little La Grange had an extensive banana field, and over 10,000 pineapples were grown. Estate Spring Gardens in the northwestern mountainous region of St. Croix was also a large plantation planted with coffee, cocoa, mango, orange, lemons, bananas, coconut, and vanilla, etc.
In 1892, the government of the Danish West Indies established an agricultural experiment station on Estate Grange for the purpose of advising planters on sugar growing, but also to carry out experiments on other crops such as fruit trees. In 1910, another agricultural experiment station was established at Estate Anna’s Hope, not too far from Grange Estate. It conducted research on a variety of crops including fruit trees.
When Charles Millspaugh visited St. Croix in the 1890s, he said, “There is no doubt that the future prosperity of the island depends largely on the growing of fruit.” In his report he mentioned a host of fruit trees growing wild on St. Croix. He described the shape, color, taste, size, and the potential these fruits would have in the agricultural industry of the Virgin Islands.
In 1949, a study was conducted on the economic development of the Virgin Islands, titled The Virgin Islands of the United States: An Opportunity and a Challenge, by Axel H. Oxholm. The study brought out the potential of using fruit as an industry in the Virgin Islands. Oral history is also an important factor whereby older people talked about their grandparents and great-grandparents who planted fruits along “gut” roadsides, and plantation settings.
According to former Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture, Horatio A. Millin, somewhere between 1962 to 1963 a shipment of new varieties of mangoes were brought into the Virgin Islands from Trinidad, St. Kitts, Montserrat, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and several other tropical countries. Over the years, new varieties of mangoes have been developed. There are approximately 70 to 100 varieties of mangoes in the Virgin Islands, particularly on St. Croix.
St. Croix was not called for nothing at one time in its history the “Garden Spot of the Antilles.” It was a garden of fruits and other agricultural crops, which made the island the fourth largest sugar-producing island in the world for its size during 1760 to 1814 when sugar was king. In the 1990s, the late Clinton George and other of my colleagues from the School of Agriculture of the University of the Virgin Islands created or established the mango festival known as “Mango Melee & Tropical Fruits.” Today, thousands upon thousands of people attend the mango festival.
The initial idea behind the mango and tropical fruit festival was to get farmers and home growers to establish fruit orchards, particularly mango, as a business. Historical records made it clear that these islands have the potential for a fruit industry. Modern technology, drying, processing, and other means of adding value to local fruits will enhance the agricultural industry in the Virgin Islands.
— Olasee Davis is a bush professor who lectures and writes about the culture, history, ecology and environment of the Virgin Islands when he is not leading hiking tours of the wild places and spaces of St. Croix and beyond.
