The fact that the announcement earlier this month that Barbados will be working with Guyana in a bilateral effort to enhance the Caribbean island’s food security situation attracted minimal public comment across the region was hardly surprising given the outcomes of previous attempts at the level of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states to seek to improve the Caribbean’s overall position.
What, arguably, holds out some hope that this bilateral effort may turn out to be a precursor to greater things is the involvement of the region’s ‘energizer bunny’ Head of Government, Prime Minister Mia Mottley who in a matter of a few months appears to have set a course for her country’s development that targets Guyana as a suitable partner for reasons that are patently obvious.
We are told that last Saturday officials from the two countries went into a ‘huddle’ at the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and Nutritional Security in Barbados that included Barbadian importers of rice, fruit and vegetables to discuss how the two countries can work together at the levels of experts, farmers and buyers to outline future plans for cooperation between Barbados and Guyana in the fields of agriculture and food security. It is, however, the actual outcomes of these engagements rather than the discourses that are ensuing that we must look to given the region’s record of overwhelming underperformance in seeking to fix its food security challenges.
Astute a Head of Government as she is, Prime Minister Mottley is aware of the fact that Guyana’s oil and gas bonanza has put the country as a whole on an ‘up and up’ trajectory and that an oil-rich Guyana economy has implications for a spillover into other sectors of the country’s economy, not least, agriculture.
To be sure Barbados has long possessed a small but energetic agricultural sector though it is patently obvious that it is modest compared with Guyana’s much more formidable agricultural prowess. Beyond that, Prime Minister Mottley is acutely aware of the ongoing vulnerability of her small island state to climate change-related challenges. Accordingly, one feels that the closeness which she has developed with Guyana at this time derives from a strategic position that takes into account the particular vulnerabilities of her own country vis a vis how Guyana can contribute to its development, going forward.
There is an important challenge here for Guyana. There can be no doubt that the previous regional food security undertakings in which the government of Guyana has been involved, the most recent one being an initiative involving Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago more than five years ago ‘crashed and burned.’ It came down, one recalls, in part, to vigorous opposition by farmers in Trinidad and Tobago to millions of dollars in funds from the T&T private sector being pumped into mega-farm investment projects in Guyana in circumstances where, so the T&T farmers contended, there was more than sufficient land in the twin-island Republic on which to pursue large scale agricultural projects using the funds that investors were contemplating shifting to Guyana.
What Prime Minister Mottley understands is that not too far down the road Guyana, one hopes, will, through its oil and gas resources and the attendant investments that the country will attract from beyond the region, become the economic powerhouse of the Caribbean and that there is no good reason why Barbados should not deploy its CARICOM ‘connection’ to benefit from Guyana’s good fortune. Indeed, if the recent pronouncement by the Mottley administration is anything to go by Barbados’ relationship with Guyana, going forward, will focus, in large measure, on working to secure greater access to food supplies through boosting (Barbados’) agriculture sector and by ensuring the continuation and expansion of imports from Guyana to help meet local needs. Prime Minister Mottley’s mission could hardly be clearer.
For Guyana, the challenge goes beyond establishing a successful partnership with Barbados that focuses on how the two can work together to enhance Barbados’ food security situation. It is about the application of a mix of financial resources and technical know-how to transform Guyana into a robust food security hub that can bear the weight of what, for the Caribbean, has become, one of its biggest challenges, going forward.