The 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2021 as the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables, (IYFV) the primary purpose being to raise awareness of the nutritional and health benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption.
What the UN is seeking to do through IYFV is to draw more focused global attention to the links that exist between agriculture and the entire food system, specifically the contribution of fruits and vegetables to the food security, generation of income, and employment of smallholders and family farmers. The overview of the year of activity places specific emphasis on the importance of the empowerment of women in pursuit of the objectives of IYFV, bearing in mind their role in agriculture and by extension in sustainable farming practices.
The announcement of IYFV by UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres late last year had been long predated by a December 2019 UN announcement to that effect, so that there can be no question of countries having only just become aware of it. One might add that the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables is directly linked to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and in that regard we submit that our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, given its particular closeness to the work of the UN, ought to be instrumental in pushing for a statement from Guyana welcoming IYFV and outlining the details of its own programme to mark the year of activities.
What ought to have been of particular significance to Guyana here is the UN’s specifically declared intention that IYFV serve as a launch pad for the uptake of effective actions that will strengthen the role of smallholder and family farmers in sustainable farming and production, particularly since these are expected to have a positive impact in reducing hunger and poverty, enhancing food and nutrition security, improving livelihoods, and contributing to better natural resource management, all of which, we are told, are on our own national agenda.
One can go further, pointing out that IYFV represents a platform to sensitize our own publics to the high levels of food loss and waste in the supply and value chains, a circumstance which, in large measure, is a function of the hobbled nature of our local food management system. Here, it should be noted that many of the stated objectives of IYFV have a direct bearing on some of the issues that impact on the development of the agricultural sector in Guyana.
From a broader CARICOM perspective the point should be made that the UN’s attempt to draw global attention to the role that fruit and vegetables play in enhancing both food availability and nutrition is not divorced from the challenges being faced by the Caribbean in tackling its multi-billion dollar food important bill.
In the particular instance of Guyana, it should be said that the optimization of opportunities to add value to our fruit and vegetables in order to enhance their competitiveness on both the local and international markets is an area in which we have traditionally been sadly lacking, the deficiencies in this area ranging from acute crop management limitations to unchanging farm-to-market logistical problems which probably results in a level of fruit and vegetable wastage that may well be equivalent to the volumes consumed.
Those apart and against the backdrop of much dawdling by both the state and private sectors we have failed, and miserably so, to establish an even halfway efficient infrastructure to take advantage of the significant agro-processing opportunities that exist here, the pursuit of agro-processing being dominated largely by local micro and small enterprises.
Ironically, agriculture being one of largest spenders of taxpayers’ monies amongst the state agencies, nowhere near enough has been done to create a more efficient fruit and vegetable management regime. Contextually, now that we are actually in International Year of Fruits and Vegetables there is really no excuse for the Ministry of Agriculture, up to this time, failing to provide the nation with at least an indicative ‘programme’ of activities to mark IYFV.
In our particular instance the omission, up until now, is all the more unacceptable since, perhaps, it would have been both novel and altogether acceptable for Guyana to put on the table, within the confines of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), some kind of plan/proposal for a set of events, even region-wide projects, to mark this occasion. After all, apart from the fact that we are, the unquestioned leader of the regional pack insofar as food cultivation is concerned, IYFV holds a particular significance for the region given what is believed to be its annual US$5 billion plus food import bill which almost certainly includes generous quantities of canned and packaged fruit and vegetables.
The indifference to the fruit and vegetable sectors in the region also persists in the face of the increasing prevalence of reports that point to diet-related diseases in Caribbean people, particularly children that may be arrested through more healthy eating. Even against this backdrop there is no evidence of any kind of initiative being undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health, or both, to mount a planned and sustained campaign to significantly raise awareness of the importance of fruit and vegetables to the diet. Frankly, when account is taken of the level of recognition which Guyana has ‘soaked up’ as the agricultural front runner of the region, it would not be unfair to say that in terms of leading the way regionally, in the creation of a robust regional agricultural sector with a strong emphasis of fruit and vegetable cultivation and consumption, our performance has been, at best, mediocre.
Setting aside the futuristic goals associated with 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the International Year of Fruit and Vegetables provides us with the much shorter term opportunity to begin to use the occasion to set a serious agenda for national and regional food security within the framework of the UN’s agenda. Such a pursuit would afford the opportunity for government, along with stakeholders in the private sector, farmers and agro processors and the food security community to probe new ways in which fruit and vegetables can be pressed into service as part of the pursuit of the broader goal of food security which continues to elude the region. Contextually, what we need to guard against are vacuous declarations extolling the virtues of IYFV – which is what governments sometimes do best –followed by protracted inactivity interspersed by the occasional symbolic gathering, which do not result in one iota of change.
Not only should there be a Guyana IYFV agenda that is practical and task-oriented, it must also find the various Ministers and other high officials in the sector, out in the fields, putting heads together with farmers, agro-processors and scientists in the various agriculture and processing-related disciplines for the purpose of setting an agenda that will go way beyond the next eleven months.