By Pushpa Balgobin
in Paramaribo, Suriname
Permanent Secretary in Suriname’s Agriculture Ministry Gerrit Breinburg says that the country has a five-year framework in place to become the regional breadbasket but later clarified that Guyana will also be a key player.
Breadbasket to the Caribbean has typically been a title associated with Guyana but critics have said it has underperformed over decades.
Breinburg was speaking during a press briefing at the ministry headquarters in Paramaribo, Suriname on Tuesday for Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA), hosted by the Caribbean Agriculture Research and Development Institute (CARDI) and the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Co-operation (CTA).
When contacted on the Surinamese official’s statement, Guyana’s Agriculture Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy told Stabroek News that Guyana “is the country that can lead the supply of food for the Caribbean”. The minister noted that “presently we can meet all the rice demand. We are working on supplying corn and soya.”
Ramsammy noted that comprehensive strategies were also being worked on to meet fruit and vegetable demands across the board, “no country has a better chance of meeting the meat demand etcetera.”
Guyana’s agriculture minister stated that several countries across the region would play a key role and that the food demand
created opportunities for export markets. He said that while Guyana was still poised to be the Caribbean’s breadbasket non-tariff barriers still needed to be tackled.
Stabroek News asked Breinburg for clarification on his breadbasket statement. He said that he could only speak from the Surinamese perspective and that he meant it was Guyana’s and Suriname’s journey together.
Suriname’s Agriculture Minister, Soeresh Algoe interjected that Guyana alone was not capable of fulfilling the needs of the region and that neither was Suriname. He said that during discussions with Ramsammy two years ago this was discussed and Guyana and Suriname were seen as partners.
He said that during a meeting on cooperation held in Nickerie over two years ago, discussions were held on how the two nations would deal with the reduction of food import bills.
Suriname’s minister emphasized the high cost of food imports to Paramaribo while stating that the country was food secure. When asked by Stabroek News, Algoe was unable to state how high Suriname’s food import bill was and was also unable to relay comprehensive data on what products are shipped to Guyana via Suriname and what that value was.
Algoe and his permanent secretary emphasized that no figures could be provided during the press conference due to the fact that certain items needed to be removed from the food import bill because they were not technically food items. However no explanation was given why this was being done during CWA 2014 and why greater preparation was not taken prior to the various presentations on food security.
Reporters asked the minister just how food security was possible in Suriname when regionally the issue was being heavily discussed and efforts across the region were being made to implement policies to foster effective food security measures. He said that Suriname could alternate subsistence produce such as growing more sweet potatoes and rice to compensate for a lack of other starches.
At the opening of Agriculture Month hosted by the Guyana School of Agriculture last week, the ministry reported that annually Guyana’s food import bill could reach US$250 million. Regionally over US$5 billion is spent on food imports.
Guyana imports roughly US$2 million in carrots while Trinidad imported US$3 million.
This lucrative market Guyana could be tapping into because the capabilities to grow carrots were being explored.
During his presentation at the CWA focusing on policy and strategy for agriculture revitalization and food nutrition, Dr John R Deep Ford, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Coordinator for the Caribbean had highlighted that Guyana reported only 5% undernourishment which meant that unlike many of its regional counterparts Guyana is recognized as being a nourished and relatively food secure country.
Piracy
Meanwhile the Surinamese permanent secretary stated that as a public servant he could not comment on the level of illegal products that crossed between the porous Guyana/Suriname borders.
He stated that the transit value of goods going to Guyana was not inclusive of any illegal contributions.
He noted that national security issues prevented him from commenting further on the strides being made to crack down on the level of piracy along the Corentyne River and backtracking.
Breinburg said that the most that could be relayed at this point in time was that interagency cooperation was ongoing. He noted that Suriname officials were working with Guyana’s agriculture ministry to tackle piracy.
