Guyana will be hosting the Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) 2013, an activity that provides opportunities to profile aspects of agriculture in the region.
This was announced on Monday by Senior Programme Coordinator of the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (CTA) José Fonseca.
Guyana last hosted CWA in October 2003.
According to a release from the Government Information Agency (GINA), Fonseca made the announcement during a workshop on the implementation and mainstreaming of Regional Fisheries Policies into Small-scale Fisheries Governance Arrangements in the Caribbean, hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM)/Caribbean Network of Fisher-folk Organisation (CNFO) and CTA.
CWA was conceptualised by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA) and Caricom as a facility to place agriculture on the front burner of regional integration activities.
In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute joined IICA and Caricom to establish a core group which functions as the Secretariat. In 2003, the ACP-EU CTA became a major partner and sponsor of the CWA activities.
Caricom said that one of the elements of the CWA is the Meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED), where Ministers of Agriculture will discuss key issues relating to agriculture including the Community Agricultural Policy, the Regional Food and Nutrition Security Action Plan, the Caribbean Agribusiness Strategy, and the Common Fisheries Policy – all essential elements in ensuring food and nutrition security for the Region.
GINA said that Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy responded to the announcement, by assuring that Guyana would meet its obligation in hosting the event and committed to making CWA 2013 one of the biggest in the region. He also said that the working group made up of Caricom, FAO, IICA, CRFM, and the government of Guyana should invite the CNFO to be part of the working committee for the Caribbean Week of Agriculture to ensure that fishing as a part of food production is included.
