Even as the respective countries in the Caribbean continue to take their own separate tilts at bemoaning what they regard as the distressing state in which much of the region’s agricultural sector finds itself, there still appears to be no apparent region-wide move to respond to what is regarded as a looming crisis. Evidence of an acute crisis in the region’s agriculture sector as a whole has long been reflected in its mounting food import bill which is now believed to be somewhere in the region of US$5 billion. Individual CARICOM member countries have been, in turn, taking passing tilts at the failure of the Caribbean to feed itself and last week the issue arose again at the Annual Review Conference of the Bank of Barbados in Bridgetown.
A report from the Barbadian capital on Monday stated that participants in the key review conference ranked agriculture second only to private sector development when asked to vote on which economic sectors ought to receive the greatest support in the drive to revive the economies of the region in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.An earlier report in the Barbados Nation had referred to the fact that the agriculture sector continued to “take a beating” across several countries in the region though the report singled out Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago as having “flourishing agriculture industries.”
The Nation says that the views of attendees at the Barbados Central Bank Review Forum seemed to suggest that most countries in the region need to propel their agriculture sectors if the region as a whole is going to strengthen its food security situation.
