Minister of Agriculture, Dr Leslie Ramsammy, says that his “20/20 vision” for agriculture would promote areas for development and the Grow More Food campaign would be a part of this vision.
In a recent interview with Stabroek News, he said Phase Two of the Grow More Food campaign is addressing the issue of food importation and moving away from agriculture at a subsistence level to entrepreneurial activity for financial gain. Ramsammy cited the contemplation of growing Irish potato as an example. “There is absolutely no doubt that it can be done here. Areas have been identified in Regions Seven, Eight and One but what is keeping it back is the study on feasibility of transporting the goods to compete with importation prices,” he said.
The minister said a feasibility study is ongoing. Bringing produce over the terrain in some regions is expensive, he noted so they have to look at the transport of goods because while the land is there, it also has to be profitable to bring the produce out to serve the other regions.
Key to Phase Two, he said, is improving not only productivity but variety. The minister said that butternut squash was being imported five years ago but now it is being exported and other crops such as broccoli and bell peppers and English tomatoes are being exported as well. He noted that the Grow More Food Campaign aims to increase the supply of food while buffering escalating prices.
The government has been criticized for not moving more comprehensively and determinedly on cutting the food importation bill. Potatoes and onions are two of the key imports but observers say that even though the government has a high-profile grow more food campaign very little work was done in this area. The cost feasibility issue has been known for decades and observers say there should have been some development on this by now.
By contrast, the observers note that Trinidad has completed trials of commercial onions and is now on the verge of doing the same with carrots. It has also pushed cassava and sweet potato use as a substitute for Irish potatoes. Jamaica is pushing the cultivation of Irish potatoes and other crops.
Meanwhile, questioned on the Jagdeo Initiative on Agriculture in Caricom, Ramsammy said that the project remains a priority. “The Jagdeo Initiative is still a priority of Guyana and by extension, Caraicom. It is part of a campaign of activities…” he said. He said that the various countries are addressing the binding constraints that each has responsibility for. Guyana has responsibility for the coordination of water management and “we are doing it,” the minister said.
He said that they have submitted a list to the Caricom Monitoring Unit on this and the initiative is “still very much alive and ongoing.”
Last year, the then president, Bharrat Jagdeo after whom the regional agriculture strategy is named said that many Caricom countries have not implemented programmes in the initiative and with rising prices for food globally they will face a problem with food prices and inflation. Prior to that, he had said that the lack of political will was stalling the regional initiative.
Early last year, Antigua’s Agriculture Minister Hilson Baptiste said that while community member countries were individually assigned responsibility for undertaking the ten binding constraints to accelerating growth in the region’s agriculture sector and articulating the ten necessary interventions, his is the only Agriculture Ministry in the region that has completed the assignment so far. “We were all supposed to submit that black book as to the way forward for each of these constraints. The deadline has come and gone. I didn’t meet the deadline but I submitted mine already, but my report can’t go anywhere unless they submit theirs,” Baptiste was quoted as saying in the February 21, 2011 issue of the Barbados Nation.
The Jagdeo Initiative, which envisages a region-wide initiative for enhancing the performance of the agricultural and agro-processing production with the dual purpose of enhancing regional food security and maximizing extra-regional market opportunities, identifies and defines key, crucial and binding constraints to the realization of those objectives and assigns member countries to develop and implement targeted, focused and practical interventions at both the regional and national levels aimed at overcoming those constraints.
The initiative which has been endorsed by the region has cited limited financing, inadequate new investments, outdated and inefficient agricultural health and food safety systems, inadequate research and development, fragmented and unorganized private sector, insufficient land and water distribution and management systems, deficient and uncoordinated risk management measures and inadequate transport systems as constraints.
