By Pushpa Balgobin
in Paramaribo, Suriname
The region’s agricultural entities need to find ways of complementing each other instead of competing with each other, which ultimately results in a contest for funding, according to Caricom’s Deputy General Secretary Manorma Soeknandan.
Amidst heavy criticisms from various stakeholders at the Meeting of the Alliance for Sustainable Development of Agricul-ture and the Rural Milieu on Wednesday in Suriname, Soeknandan said that a “real focused approach within the context of limited financial and human resources” was necessary and would allow for benchmarking of achievements.
She was at the time responding to criticism by Dominica’s Minister of Agriculture Matthew Walter, at the Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) being held in Paramaribo, Suriname.
Walter had expressed his disappointment over what transpired during last year’s CWA, held in Guyana, where there was no feedback as to whether or not recommendations had been implemented.
He noted that at the end of every CWA a report was needed that would articulate all of the policy recommendations that were arrived at during the various presentations. Walter said that “it will become an exercise in futility” should more not be done to translate what happens at the various meetings of regional officials into tangible policy development.
Soeknandan spoke with members of the Guyanese media after the Alliance Meeting and said that funding would continue to be an issue, especially if various regional agencies found themselves in competition with one another.
She said that “let us specialise and let us complement each other.”
Soeknandan said that countries such as Guyana, which have far-reaching capabilities to expand their agricultural capacity, did not have to do so and could benefit from specialisation. She said that currently Guyana had the land but other components could be rendered from other countries in the region.
She said that the region needed a loan specialist and countries need to find ways to foster each other’s growth without competing.
She raised the issue of pushing certain agricultural products and how little that actually did for the region because if all 15 Caricom countries were to engage on similar activities there would be no regional buying and selling
Instead of having agency-overlapping, Soeknandan said that all agencies that noticed similar goals needed to partner, trade information and engage in complementary work.
Meanwhile, during the Alliance meeting Caricom officials could not provide a definitive answer to the queries raised by Walters. Prior to the Minister raising his disappointments, Jethro Greene of the Caribbean Farmers Net-work (CaFAN), one of the four entities that come under Caribbean Agricul-tural Research and Deve-lopment Institute (CARDI) and the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Co-operation (CTA), said that assistance is still lacking.
He said that while the CWA was being hosted under the theme of realising the potential of the family farm, there has been no focused programme aimed regionally at the family farm. Chief Executive Officer of the Barbadian Agriculture Society, which is a member of CaFAN, James Paul reiterated Greene’s pronouncements and noted that agriculture development was tied to it being realised as a business.
He said that as a region private sector engagement was very necessary. Paul called the current level of engagement geriatric and in need of revitalisation.
The various criticisms did not fall on deaf ears. When spoken to after the Alliance Meeting, Executive Director of the CTA Michael Hailu said that assessment of the CWA would be forthcoming in the future.
Hailu said that the CTA with or without forums such as the CWA were serious about recommendations to grow agriculture and that venues like the CWA were used to foster implementation. However he noted with trepidation that implementation of recommendations may be lacking across the region.
While Hailu shied away from putting a dollar amount on what the CTA spends annually in the promotion of agriculture advancement, he did say that it was his belief that there is a return on the investment.
He said that moving onward, the CTA could systemically look at specific follow-up measures to assess how well implementation of policy in terms of addressing youth and women involvement in agriculture development has been done.
He stressed that the topics being focused on during the 2014 CWA could be reviewed prior to next years. Hailu did not state whether CARDI/CTA would be reducing its financial support of CWAs in the future and instead stress more national funding.
