A few days ago Stabroek Business interviewed the Country Representative of the Inter-American Insti-tute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) Ignatius Jean about the work of IICA in Guyana and about the role of the organization in supporting the current regional response to the global food crisis.
It was a straightforward enough interview during which Mr. Jean articulated IICA’s role in Guyana, some of the projects with which the organization is associated and the various types of support that it is offering to the Jagdeo Initiative.
What was perhaps more interesting about the encounter than the information disseminated by Mr. Jean was his timely reminder that the real gains of the region’s current efforts to ensure its food security will take time and that, moreover, those gains can only be realized if some critical challenges are met and overcome.
Mr. Jean reminded, for example, of the importance of attracting major investor participation in large scale agricultural ventures and of the need to create and sustain linkages between the regional tourism and agricultural sectors that would have the effect of reducing the Caribbean’s dependence on extra-regional food imports for consumption by tourists. He explained that these are processes which, in some instances, are not necessarily uncomplicated and which, in some other cases, will require some measure of change on the part of Caribbean societies as a whole.
The IICA Representative made the point that major investor involvement in the region’s agricultural sector will happen only if an enabling business environment – with all that that implies – is put in place. In this regard Mr. Jean raised the issue of insurance for the agricultural sector, one of the issues that surfaced during the recent agri-business forum here. We learnt that IICA itself is involved in supporting the creation of “insurance models” some of which can hopefully be applied to major regional farming ventures.
And as far as agri-tourism is concerned Mr. Jean said that the concept goes way beyond the notion of visitors simply experiencing the farming culture of rural communities. It is, he said, about creating linkages between the tourism and agricultural sectors that would enable a reduction in the volume of foods imported from North America and Europe and increase the volume of regionally produced food consumed in the tourism sector.
Of course, as Mr. Jean pointed out, if the regional agricultural sector is to secure a larger share of the market for foods consumed in its tourism sector it would have to be far more mindful of standards of safety and health and generally production practices in the sector would have to take greater account of the importance of meeting the exacting standards of the tourism industry.
As a professional agriculturalist and a “Caribbean man” Mr. Jean clearly understands the challenges associated with the current food security undertaking and cautions against the kind of ‘quick fix’ solutions that we sometimes come to expect. He believes that while the challenge to the region’s food security opens up possibilities for revolutionizing the country’s agricultural sector, regional governments, business sectors, banking and insurance communities, farmers and populations as a whole must allocate the human and technical resources and, equally important, must be prepared to see the broadening of the regional agricultural base as a process rather than an overnight phenomenon.