Even as regional food security appears to have returned close to the top of the agenda of the Carib-bean Community (CARICOM), Jamaica, one member country that has consistently demonstrated an interest in raising its own agricultural profile has announced that its agriculture is to benefit from an infusion of funding from the World Food Programme (WFP) with which to increase its agricultural output and improve sustainability and resilience in the sector.
A release from the Jamaica Information Service (JIS) earlier this week makes the disclosure amidst against the backdrop of what it describes as “a new campaign, titled “Grow Smart, Eat Smart,” as part of a broader domestic food security thrust.
The disclosure, which came as preparations were being finalized for the staging of the broader regional ‘food security’ forum under the 25×2025 theme, in Guyana, alludes to a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) backed Food Loss and Waste Reduction (FLW) Programme that will attract a US$38 million dollar input from the UN organization.
The funding, the JIS report says, will target strategies designed to focus on strengthening food value chain operations, part of a package of strategic food security actions for the new fiscal year, under a ‘Grow Smart, Eat Smart themed initiative. “That will speak to a strategy for reducing food losses along value chains, supporting our farmers to reduce post-harvest losses, and extending produce shelf-life to ensure enhanced farm and household cash inflows,” Jamaica’s Agriculture Minister Pearnel Charles Jr. is quoted as saying in his contribution to the country’s 2022/23 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday,
Simultaneously, the Jamaica Ministry of Agriculture will reportedly be collaborating with the FAO in projects designed to improve phyto-sanitary, food safety and market access opportunities, the report says.
The announcement of the FAO-backed Jamaica initiative surfaced as final preparations were being made in Georgetown for what is termed the 25×2025 gathering, a forum that will focus on the regional target of reducing extra-regional food imports by 25% by 2025. The event, which is being attended by several CARICOM Heads of Government what would appear to reflect an attitudinal shift in the level of urgency which the Community now attaches to its food security agenda.
The partnership between Jamaica and the FAO will, the JIS report says, include “the $45-million Rocky Point Fishing Beach Improvement Project” that embraces “provision of landing equipment, fish cleaning and storage facilities, mangrove protection, as well as training for users, and the identification of two technical projects valued at $37 million for implementation across the sector.”
Both the Georgetown forum and the Jamaica/ FAO initiative have emerged on the back of what is widely felt to the protracted sluggish sluggishness in the region’s approach to food security that has been characterized by the periodic ‘talking up’ of the importance of improving the Caribbean’s food production profile, a posture that is usually unattended by any serious follow-up initiatives aimed at actualization.
Whilst the high-profile staging of the 25×2025 Georgetown forum has served to refocus the regional spotlight on what has become a routine of successive pronouncements centered around the Caribbean’s multi-billion dollar food import bill, previous experience of the behavior of governments in the matter of matching assertive undertakings with attendant practical action will almost certainly create, in this instance, a wait and see posture the duration of which will be determined by just how long it takes for the countries, to convert the commitments given at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre into concrete progress.
