The announcement last week that Guyana will host the 38th FAO Regional Conference in 2024 is probably unsurprising, given, first, the country’s longstanding pre-eminent position in the region as a food-producing nation and secondly, the increasing attention that we now attract, internationally, on account of our new-found oil & gas wealth.
The privilege of hosting high-profile international conferences is usually, to a considerable extent, an indication of the esteem in which a country is held by the rest of the international community. One assumes, of course, that by 2024, Guyana will put in place the various infrastructural and logistical edifices to justify its selection to host such a high-calibre gathering.
It should be stated, of course, that the announcement that Guyana will be hosting the FAO forum, comes at a time when the region is once again ‘revving its engines’ about the desirability of raising its food security profile and in this regard and unsurprisingly, Guyana would appear to have been designated as the regional leader in pursuit of the fashioning and implementation of a food security plan.
The point need hardly be made, of course, that Guyana has long been considered the regional front-runner in the agriculture sector, that distinction arising out of the fact that the country possesses the most bountiful food-producing agricultural sector in the region and that there has never been any question of us being able to produce sufficient food to feed ourselves, never mind the fact that there are some parts of this vast country where communities still do not consistently benefit from a condition that can properly be defined as food security.
Leadership in the agriculture sector and in helping to guarantee the food security of the Caribbean demands more than just ‘helping out’ those other countries in the region that fall on hard times in instances of hurricanes, for example. By now, frankly, we (Guyana, that is) ought to have hitched the sails of our own agricultural sector to the larger mast of the wider region’s food security needs, not just in terms of our food exports to the region but also in terms being able to work with those countries to help them raise their own domestic food-production levels to a point where they too could arrive at a condition closer to food security. This is part of what this newspaper understands the Caribbean Community to be about.
The pursuit of regional food security ought to begin at the point of moving to effect a continual reduction in our food imports. There is hardly a Head of Government in the region that has not, at one time or another, uttered words to that effect. Sadly, there is no persuasive evidence that we have consistently pursued this goal, so that, these days, the region is saddled with a (reported) US$5 billion food import bill which, given the multiplicity of our wider economic woes, is unquestionably sustainable. Frankly, it is to our collective shame that there has been, over the years, no known resolute effort by the collective Caribbean Community to cut back on food imports and to simultaneously replace some of those by undertaking a serious region-wide effort to increase the levels of home-grown food cultivation. To put it bluntly, over the years, the region has approached the issue of food security mostly from the perspective of what, unfailingly, always turns out to be, more or less, empty rhetoric.
Our efforts at intra-regional cooperation to fashion a food security regime based on a system that allows each country to contribute, to the extent that it can, to such an objective, has never really gotten past the stage of articulation of grandiose ideas. We can, for example, reflect ruefully on the failed attempts on the parts of Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago to get the regional food-security ‘show’ on the road. Those efforts crashed and burned against the background of failure to effectively follow up decisions made on paper as well as repeated bouts of bickering between Georgetown and Port of Spain arising out of squabbles over market access, particularly when it came to access for Guyanese produce to Trinidad markets. This is only one example of what have been the patterns of fractious disagreements among Caribbean countries on the issue of market access that have a peculiar way of becoming exaggerated into more expansive rows that are both unnecessary and overwhelmingly counterproductive.
The outcomes? Over a period of more than two decades the ‘noises’ that have emanated from the Caribbean regarding the desirability of a regional food security plan have amounted to no more than a continuum of ‘false starts’ and that, it has to be said, has also been due to Guyana’s failure, as the designated leader of the food security ‘pack’ to give effective leadership to a regional food security ‘plan’. If this is not the first time that this newspaper is making this point, the repetitiveness bespeaks a keenness to underscore.
The available evidence manifestly suggests that we in the region – and Guyana has been one of the chief culprits in this regard – –are inclined to equate rhetoric with actual progress. In this particular instance we have been unable to recognize that endless sit downs amongst country representatives, including Heads of Government to talk regional food security has never really gone anywhere. Put differently, we have gotten out of the regional food security discourses that have ensued, just what we have put into them… nothing.
While it is usually Caribbean Heads of Government that are expected to drive the regional food security initiative, it is the respective Ministers/ministries of Agriculture that are expected to pilot these initiatives and implement the decisions made at Heads of Government level. In the instance of Guyana – and as this newspaper has opined previously – our own Ministry of Agriculture has long appeared to lack the capacity to serve as an operating secretariat for the effective conceptualization and execution of a workable regional food security plan. One of the more recent examples of its ineptitude/indifference in this regard (and this is not the first time we have pointed this out) was its failure (even allowing for COVID-19) to execute the undertakings that it gave in the matter of the events associated with International Year of Fruits and Vegetables (IYFG) last year. That failure alone, raises serious question marks about Guyana’s ability, at this time, to effectively pilot a regional plan for sustainable food security. Interestingly, the Ministry of Agriculture’s failure in this regard (and it should be noted that some of the IYFG undertakings ought to have amounted to no more than proverbial walks in the park) has not once, insofar as we are aware, come up for serious ventilation at the policy level within the Ministry.
This (who knows?) might change given the fact that Guyana, up ahead, is likely to be better resourced to make a more meaningful fist of that mission. We shall have to wait and see.
That Guyana has been identified by the other member countries to host the 38th session of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean is perhaps the country’s best opportunity yet to demonstrate that it can give leadership to a food security plan for the region which, over several years, has failed to materialize. Arguably, it can be said that the country is perhaps better positioned than it has been previously, to give real leadership in that regard. The ball, this time around, is fully in our court and there are expectations that we will raise our game, considerably, in this regard.
