Even as the Caribbean persists in its inexplicable dilatoriness over what regional Heads have long agreed is a need to drastically reduce its food import bill by paying a great deal more attention to strengthening their agricultural sectors, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organiza-tion (FAO) continues to predict a likely global food crisis by the middle of the century unless there are significant increases in food output.
In response to the recent predictions by Britain’s academy of sciences, the Royal Society that the global population could reach 9 billion by 2050 the FAO says that global food production will have to increase by at least 50 per cent if significant pockets of population, particularly in poor countries, are not to go hungry.
As far as developing countries – including the Caribbean are concerned – the FAO says that investments in agriculture will have to reach around US$83 billion annually and food production will have to increase by around 70 per cent by mid-century. That, for poor countries, is a daunting challenge.
Unquestionably, we in the Caribbean with our small population and considerable agricultural potential are, among the poorer regions of the world that are perhaps best positioned to stave off any food crisis and even to help feed hungry stomachs in other parts of the world. But there is much that still needs to be done by way of getting our act together if that potential is to be transformed into a level of agricultural production that can guarantee our food security.
Discourses led by Guyana have sought to push the Caribbean Community in the direction of a regional approach to ensuring that meaningful action is taken to strengthen our food production capacity. At both the 2008 forum held here in Georgetown and at the Caricom Heads Summit held here earlier this year the challenge of responding to the need to secure regional food security was acknowledged and the Caricom Secretariat itself has been hosting regional fora on other food-related issues including the strengthening of the Caribbean’s fisheries sector.
As a follow up to these initiatives one might have expected that by this time some kind of regional multi-disciplinary committee of experts would have been established to think through and report on the various issues that have to do with our food security, issues like whether or not we will be able to produce enough food at affordable prices; the extent of capacity in terms of land and water available for agricultural production; new technology requirements that can enable more efficient use of scarce resources; funding needed for investment in research and development; levels of investment necessary in order to help agriculture adapt to climate change and the extent to which agriculture can help contribute to mitigating weather events.
These are all issues that need to be carefully and collectively considered by the region and it is likely that we may even need a fair measure of external support if they are to be addressed thoroughly and effectively.
One might also have expected a far greater level of intra-regional discourse at the level of Caricom Agriculture Ministers and an attendant aggressive public information drive to keep the people of the region abreast of progress towards the promised collective effort to safeguard our food security. Again, we have seen no such development.
The question arises as to whether there is any real collective enthusiasm for building a strong regional agricultural sector particularly in the face of evidence that at least one Caribbean territory appears to see its solution for food import costs as lying in the establishment of a bulk import agency while another is in the midst of a major extra-regionally funded agricultural diversification programme.
This month’s World Food Summit – at which we expect that the region will be heavily represented – offers an opportunity for the Caribbean to promulgate its own food plan for the future and at the same time to make a collective case for long-term support funding for its implementation. It does not appear, however, for all the high level meetings, discourses and summitry that have ensued for some time now that there is any regional plan in any shape or form that the region can take to the World Food Summit.
Given the FAO’s recent restatement of its concern that an impending global food crisis is real, Caricom Heads need to provide clear and concrete indications of a genuine commitment to a regional food initiative; not another high profile declaration of intent but a real, live and practical initiative like, for example, the creation of the aforementioned cadre of multi-skilled technicians to work through the various issues related to putting the plan together and making their submission within a reasonable time frame. After that we need to see evidence of practical action on the ground to move the process forward.