The country has been fairly agog over last week’s Agri-Investment Forum and Expo: Investing in Vision 25 by 2025 at the Arthur Chung Con-ference Centre, Liliendaal, attended by many of the who’s who of Caricom and featuring an eye-catching and inspiring display of local products and food. Kudos must be given to the exhibitors, who as usual, went above and beyond, showcasing Guyana’s bounty and innovation in food as well as excellence in various artforms.
However, no one should hold their breath while awaiting the much-hyped and anticipated outcomes of the forum despite the bilateral agreements signed and the published accord reached by Caricom leaders. They just will not happen soon enough to make a difference. Unfortunately, the fact is that the region is likely to find itself in far more dire straits with regard to its food import bill before any real change occurs.
Let’s face it, goals with much greater potential than Caricom’s 25 by 2025 have faltered and failed. For all the publicity and work that went into the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, they still fell far short of the mark in 2015. The target date for the subsequent Sustainable Development Goals is a short eight years away and already there are projections that they won’t be met. There is also the blatant global obfuscation surrounding climate targets, which are crucial to our very survival.
Within Caricom, individual countries move at their own pace. In some countries change is almost mercurial, but those can be counted on one hand with fingers to spare. For instance, to date following umpteen concerns raised, The Bahamas and Jamaica were the only two countries to actually reduce their food imports. Further, the two Caribbean leaders named among Time Magazine’s annual list of 100 most influential people were Portia Simpson-Miller of Jamaica in 2012 and Barbados’s Mia Mottley this year. This speaks volumes.
Despite the references made by our president and other speakers at last week’s forum, Caricom’s food import bill and burgeoning food insecurity are not casualties of the Russia-Ukraine conflict or other recent world happenings. On the contrary, they are wholly the results of decisions taken by leaders, and though lamented over for years, there has been little to no action taken to effect change.
Various publications have put the region’s astronomical food import bill for 2020 at between US$8 billion and US$10 billion, which is in line with projections made by the World Bank more than four years earlier based on the trends at the time.
Back in 2008, when the food import bill was US$2 billion, up from US$100 million in 1961, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation had warned that continuing on that path could both stymie agriculture and impact health in the region. No heed was paid to this. The Caricom Secretariat has also regularly churned out papers citing the cost of food imports, the corresponding vulnerability of the region’s agricultural sector and the concomitant nutritional and economic impoverishment of its people, which apparently no one reads. That is only one reason why cheese, butter, sau-sages, pork, beef, lamb, duck, chicken, dried, condensed and evaporated milk, apples, grapes, beverages including water, potatoes and fresh and frozen vegetables, to name a few items, have continued to pour into a region perfectly capable of producing most if not all of these items and better, fresher varieties. Of course, the common excuse is the need to cater to tourists’ palates. Then there is the very real interpretation that many big importers have friends in high places.
Since the recent forum was held here and the government used the occasion to flaunt our agricultural prowess, it is worth a closer look. Credit must be given where due, and Guyana deserves credit for being one of only three countries in the Caribbean which produce over 50% of the food they consume; the other two are Belize and Haiti. However, the veneration has to stop there.
At a business summit held here in 2017, organised by the Private Sector Commission in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank, the former government had addressed the need to lower Guyana’s food import bill. It was noted then that from 2011 to 2016 there had been a 48% increase in food imports with a figure of US$62 million quoted as being spent on these top commodities: milk, cream, cheese, spices, potatoes, onions, biscuits, peas, beans, and flour. Statistics from the World Bank and UN Comtrade pegged Guyana’s food imports in 2019 at more than US$200.2 million; the top commodities mentioned above ringing up just over US$80 million.
Meanwhile, local farmers are suffering immense losses from the inability to get their produce to local markets in a timely manner, as well as other impediments including floods owing to poor drainage. The lack of a bolster in certain costs to farmers results in food prices continuing to skyrocket. In addition, fisherfolk are bemoaning a dearth in their catches, which government officials insist, without providing any evidence, has nothing to do with the disturbance caused by oil exploitation in Guyana’s waters.
There is therefore a vexing amount of hypocrisy in President Irfaan Ali’s admonition to Caricom leaders on May 19 when he opened the forum. He was quoted as saying: “As a region, we cannot continue the importation of billions of dollars in products that we can produce right here locally”. On that note, even more galling is the government’s propensity to trot out the arts community for exhibition and entertainment – as was done last week – while giving the very least to that industry. In fact, it could very well do the performing arts a huge disservice with the proposed increases in rental fees for the National Cultural Centre (SN 2022/05/22). In the face of all this, President Ali’s call for ‘less talk and more work’ makes for a good slogan, but, to paraphrase Matthew 7:5 in the Bible, only serves to illustrate government’s inability to see the beam in its own eye, while pointing to the mote in its neighbours’.
