What The Root Cause Series Is About
Knowing More. Growing More.
The Root Cause is a collaborative thought-leadership series exploring the future of agriculture in small island systems like The Bahamas.
The premise is simple, but urgent:
food security isn’t just about growing more; it’s about knowing more.
food security isn’t just about growing more; it’s about knowing more.
In environments where margins are thin, climate volatility is high, and supply chains are fragile, intuition alone isn’t enough. But neither is technology on its own. Real resilience emerges when lived farming experience is paired with deeper understanding of patterns, trade-offs, and timing.
That’s what this series is designed to do.
Two Lenses. One Reality
Every topic in The Root Cause series is explored through two complementary lenses, each grounded in a different form of expertise, but focused on the same goal: better decisions under real-world constraints.
The Farm Lens
Led by: Berkshire Bahamas Farms
Grounded in day-to-day operational reality—biology, labor, weather, and the decisions that happen in the dirt. This lens ensures the narrative never drifts into abstraction by anchoring every insight in daily farm realities.
The Intelligence Lens
Led by: NeoSynergy Solutions
The Intelligence Lens frames the farm as a system over time. It uses data to preserve context, recognize patterns, and reduce reliance on hindsight, positioning technology as a tool for foresight rather than just control. The goal is not optimization for its own sake, but more consistent, defensible decisions under uncertainty.
A 5-Part Narrative Arc
The Root Cause follows a deliberate five-part narrative arc designed to build understanding without overreach. Rather than treating each article as a standalone take, the series unfolds progressively—moving from foundational ideas to more applied questions, and from the reality of the individual farm to the broader challenge of national food security.
Each piece explores the same core question from a different angle, layering insight over time. Early articles establish the philosophy of intelligence as stewardship. Later pieces test that philosophy against real constraints, policy implications, and the practical limits of technology itself. Together, the arc is meant to reflect how understanding actually develops on a farm: incrementally, contextually, and through experience.
New Root Cause articles will be released periodically and published here as they become available, allowing the series to evolve alongside the realities it examines.
Click the articles below to explore the series.
Part 1
Why Knowing More Matters More Than Growing More
Read Time: 10 minutes
We are moving past the idea that data is just for checking the weather. It’s about tracking the invisible things—how water quality shifts, how feed inputs change, and how the environment breathes. This piece explores why the best farmers aren't just watching the clouds; they are watching the whole system to predict what happens next.
Part 2
The Caribbean Famer Has Always Been a Data Scientist
Read Time: 10 minutes
We are moving past the idea that data is just for checking the weather. It’s about tracking the invisible things—how water quality shifts, how feed inputs change, and how the environment breathes. This piece explores why the best farmers aren't just watching the clouds; they are watching the whole system to predict what happens next.
Part 3
Why Small Farms Need Intelligence More Than Big Agriculture
Read Time: 10 minutes
We are moving past the idea that data is just for checking the weather. It’s about tracking the invisible things—how water quality shifts, how feed inputs change, and how the environment breathes. This piece explores why the best farmers aren't just watching the clouds; they are watching the whole system to predict what happens next.
Part 4
Food Security Is an Intelligence Problem First
Read Time: 10 minutes
We are moving past the idea that data is just for checking the weather. It’s about tracking the invisible things—how water quality shifts, how feed inputs change, and how the environment breathes. This piece explores why the best farmers aren't just watching the clouds; they are watching the whole system to predict what happens next.
Part 5
What AI Can — and Cannot — Do For Farmers
Read Time: 10 minutes
We are moving past the idea that data is just for checking the weather. It’s about tracking the invisible things—how water quality shifts, how feed inputs change, and how the environment breathes. This piece explores why the best farmers aren't just watching the clouds; they are watching the whole system to predict what happens next.