– at Special COTED meeting
A Special Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) Meeting on Agriculture last week agreed that action must be taken to address the bottlenecks in transporting produce within the region as it strives to achieve food security and to strengthen the linkages between agriculture and tourism.
A press statement from the Caricom Secretariat said the Special Meeting for agriculture ministers, which concluded on Friday, was the last activity of the 11th Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) held in Antigua and Barbuda, under the theme ‘Celebrating Youth and Gender in Caribbean Agriculture: Each Endeavouring, All Achieving.’
At a press conference at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium at the close of the meeting, Chair of COTED Roger Clarke pointed out that food security and the reduction of the region’s very high food import bill were the meeting’s main concern and the CWA, which he described as “very, very fruitful.”
Clarke said the meeting endorsed a Plan of Action for the strengthening of linkages between agriculture and tourism, which includes measures to increase the trade of agricultural goods into the tourism and hospitality sector, and rural/culinary tourism product development and promotion. The special focus in this regard was on root and tuber crops.
The meeting held extensive discussions on the subject of linking small farmers to market and the ministers received reports from the Caribbean Farmers Network (CaFAN) on the implementation of the Canadian International Development Agency-funded PROPEL programme, which will support increased access to intra-regional markets by small farmers. The programme will focus on a selection of regional agricultural products, forging links with supermarkets and other buyers. Clarke said the meeting welcomed the initiative, particularly in the light of the region’s high food bill.
However, concerns were raised about poor transportation linkages available to region’s agricultural producers, which Clarke described as “a logistical nightmare” and it was agreed that intensified action was needed in this area. The meeting also agreed that concerted action needed to be taken to reduce the costs of production.
“Discussions took place because the CaFAN organisation, which represents farmers throughout the region, had been looking at the intra-regional trade in agriculture and what came out as an impediment was the transportation problem.
It has to do with a lot of things: it has to do with volumes; it has to do with the demand in particular territories. So what they have decided to do is to establish some linkage with the private sector … There must be synergies between those who want the product, how much they want, what is perishable, what can be held for longer periods, all those sorts of things,” Clarke said.
The minister was optimistic that a solution could be found “because when you analyse the demand for food within the region and how much is coming extra-regionally, you know that the potential and the possibilities are there.” He said that the major problem identified is that it is much easier to import produce from Miami to anywhere in the region than move from country to country within the region, and that is being addressed. “But it has to start from the production, the demand and the information – people have to know what is needed and then they plan for it,” Clarke said.
Matthew Walter, Chairman of the Meeting of the Alliance for Sustainable Development of Agriculture and the Rural Milieu (The Alliance) and Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Dominica; and Hilson Baptiste, host Minister of Agriculture, Lands, Housing and the Environment, also addressed the issue of transportation within the region. Both ministers underscored the need for information, further discussion, and the modernisation of vessels to ply the regional route, and agreed that the resolution to the transportation difficulties lay in member states working together.
Desiree Field-Ridley, Officer-in-Charge, Directorate of Trade and Economic Integration at the Caricom Secretariat, who shared the press conference with the ministers, also underlined the need for cohesiveness. She said that the CWA was packed with a wide cross-section of stakeholder events, which demonstrated its potential to identify what was needed to move the sector forward and highlighted the need for better access to, and use of, the Region’s resources.
Filed-Ridley also pointed out that “we are all very small countries; we all have challenges and obviously we will do better if we are working together.” “With rising prices, we have to produce competitively and to do so, we have to use all the resources we have and this Week positions us to do that,” she added.
