(Trinidad Guardian) As the Food Production Minister Vasant Bharath continues his mandate to make food security a priority for T&T, he has pledged his continued support for a collective initiative with Caricom to encourage regional food production and to push agriculture as a sustainable business. The national food campaign—“Put T&T on your table”—that was launched by T&T’s Food Production ministry recently, formed part of a collective initiative by CARICOM to promote food security in each country. Bharath who was speaking yesterday at phase two of a project to promote Caricom/Cariforum food security at a conference held at the Hilton Trinidad hotel said that he believed the region has a real opportunity to grow agriculture into a sustainable business.
The three-day conference, under the theme, Lessons Learnt and Future Outlook Roundtable programme, seeks to provide an update on project achievements and initiate discussions on supportive policies and follow-up activities for improved food security. The main purpose behind the collective initiative is to focus on a value chain approach, while emphasising value creation and innovation. Other regional countries have embarked on their own initiatives to encourage increased food production and met yesterday to share their experiences and replicate their success. Bharath said this initiative was important because food production for consumption versus the production for renewable energy resources such as ethanol has been a challenge as this has contributed to high food prices. Some countries, such as T&T import corn, which is one of the major commodity for the production of ethanol.
But Bharath said there is an opportunity for certain countries in the region like Belize to provide these food crops used in ethanol production. On the local front, Bharath said the ministry was approaching other restaurants and fastfood outlets to continue its national campaign of presenting local foods like sweet potato fries on their menus. He said consumers now have access to sweet potato fries at six KFC outlets. Robert Best, value chain specialist and project coordinator, said he agreed with Bharath that there were opportunities to grow agri-business in the region and promote regional food security. Best said the Caribbean Regional Food and Nutrition Security policy which was approved by the Council of Trade and Economic Development (COTED) in October, would provide the structure and guidelines to allow the region to increase food production in a meaningful way.
He said countries like Belize are already growing all of their corn and the Caribbean Poultry Association is in discussions with Belize about growing corn for other countries in the region. “Part of our action plan is to grow corn in Guyana and for Belize to sell to Jamaica,” Best said. Best stated that there was a current proposal being drafted to get Belize to grow and provide corn for other countries and transfer their experiences. Sergio Garcia, programme manager, agriculture and industry at the Caricom secretariat in Guyana, said they are working with three strategies to encourage regional production integration, which involves using the competitive advantage of each country with respect to its commodity.
For those countries facing land space challenges, Garcia said Guyana and Belize were offering “cheap land” for investors who wish to increase their food production. Another strategy he outlined is that Caricom is seeking to promote joint venture investments, so the private sector in one member state could join with another to do production. Underscoring Bharath’s view on encouraging member states to provide incentives for agriculture, Garcia said, focus must also be paid to reducing taxes on agriculture food inputs. This would allow them to become more competitive as they move along the value chain, he said.
