Against the backdrop of numerous un-kept promises by Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Heads of Government to ‘put heads together’ to come up with strategies to reduce extra-regional food imports and to move closer to a condition of regional food security, the region as a whole has witnessed an inexorable climb in its food import bill, a circumstance that represents a baffling dichotomy between rhetoric and action.
With the regional food import bill now believed to be standing somewhere in the region of US$5 billion, there has been yet another intervention by Guyana, this time in the person of the country’s President, Irfaan Ali, who last week alluded to the importance of what the state-run Department of Public Information (DPI) described as “across-the-board commitments by CARICOM Member States” to achieve the target of reducing food importation by 25 per cent by the year 2025.
It has to be said that similar calls have been made across the region though none have met with anything even remotely resembling a robust response from Heads of Government or from the region as a whole.
Part of the problem with the regional discourse on reducing dependence on extra-regional food imports is that it has become stuck in interludes of brief deafening noises and complete silence, one of the problems being that Guyana, the looked-to country in the region to lend impetus to a regional food security thrust, has, over the years, been sluggish in its leadership. This time, however, armed with the country’s enhanced regional and international recognition arising out of its new found status as an oil-producing country, Guyana might yet manage to galvanise the rest of the region behind a determined food security drive.
To do so, however, the country’s agriculture portfolio will have to lift itself out of the pool of sluggishness that caused it to overlook its undertaking to plan and execute the country’s promised programme of activities to mark International Year of Fruits and Vegetables (IYFG) last year, which could well have been used as a kickstart to a wider programme to breathe life into a planned and sustained agriculture-driven programme to drive regional food security.
Guyana currently holds lead responsibility for agriculture, agricultural diversification, and food security in CARICOM and is spearheading the regional body’s quest to reduce its US$5 billion food import bill. Whether there exists a clear agenda to go along with that mandate remains unclear.
Last Friday, President Ali used the forum of the 101st Special Meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED), to raise again the vexed issue of regional food security. “It is either we are serious about this or we are not serious about this – we have to decide. This is not an individual country trying to achieve something; this is us as a collective. This is about us being successful together… we cannot advance this if the commitment and the full participation is not there”, the President said.
Where this will lead, however, is another matter. Over time it has become commonplace for ‘fair weather’ commitments to be followed by infuriating indifference with local and regional officials seemingly lacking either the organisational skills or the operating credentials to kickstart a workable intra-regional initiative to tackle the food security issue.
The sluggishness at the level of institutions in the region to get the show on the road insofar as hastening the pace of reducing regional dependence on extra-regional foods has been legendary. In the course of the recent COTED meeting, Guyana’s Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha was asked to provide a progress report on the work of the task force up to this time though, significantly, that report, or any part thereof, was not included in the DPI release. Nor has there been any information arising out of the reports of the various Ministers and other senior functionaries, which were expected to be delivered on their respective countries’ efforts to address agriculture-related issues.
While the President is, according to the DPI report, on record as saying that the intention is to be able to lead an effort to mobilise technical help and financial resources and to work with the Member States in achieving the target, much more evidence is needed that the region is, as yet, possessed of the requisite collective impetus to take the process forward.
Trade and economic relations between and amongst CARICOM countries are still sufficiently significant to continue to slow the pace of a determined effort to effectively address the regional food security issue. At last week’s COTED virtual forum, the respective countries were still wrestling with issues like the removal of non-tariff barriers as a means of promoting intra-regional trade as well as the expeditious resolution of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) issues among the long-standing and as yet unresolved issues raised at the meeting.
