Part of the significance of the staging of the recent 25 x 2025 forum in Guyana was the sense of urgency which the region is now compelled to attach to its food security in the wake of its shocking and wholly inexcusable revelation that its extra-regional food import bill is probably in excess of US$6 billion. This, in itself, is not a reflection of the region’s inability to feed itself, given the volumes of local agricultural produce, particularly in Guyana. It is, plain and simple, a self-inflicted, inexcusable failure. Indeed, some countries in the region, Jamaica being a standout in this regard, have not only been holding their own in agricultural production but have been more successful than any other country in the region in promoting its agro-produce in Europe and North America.
In recent time, several factors have caused the region to focus more attention on the need to ‘raise its game’ insofar as food production is concerned. The first is the growing realisation that no country in the region – and this includes Guyana, its much vaunted agricultural sector, notwithstanding – has arrived at a point of attaining a condition of food security, properly defined as “a state of having reliable access to sufficient quantities of affordable, nutritious food.” Secondly, global circumstances, including the recent impact of the protracted COVID-19 pandemic, has resulted in major food scarcity crises in several countries across the world, a condition which, since earlier this year, has been rendered worse by the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine on that country’s food exports, notably wheat.
But there is another important reason why the Caribbean has to be concerned about its food production profile. Increasingly, in relatively recent years, research in the region has been ‘showing up’ nutrition-related challenges associated with consuming foods produced/manufactured outside the region.
Part of the problem that the Caribbean has always faced with its food consumption patterns is a proclivity for ‘foreign taste’, a turn of phrase that seeks to describe what is believed to be a widespread preference among Caribbean people for (processed) foods imported from North America and Europe. When that is added to the additional extra-regional food imports to meet the tastes of tourists, it understandably ‘imprisons’ the region with exorbitant food import bills that it simply cannot afford to meet in the longer term.
What has further enhanced the region’s awareness of the need to ‘get moving’ insofar as maximizing its food security is concerned is, in large measure, the grim warnings that they have had from the experiences of countries in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, of serious food shortages arising largely out of setbacks in the agricultural, manufacturing, and shipping sectors, brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
But in the matter of its current food security challenges, the Caribbean has to a considerable extent, been its own worst enemy. An examination of the recent history of ‘plans’ to boost agricultural production in the region and to put in place mechanisms to ensure adequate region-wide distribution, will doubtless expose the numerous false starts arising out of the persistent failure of the region to effectively execute plans fashioned under the umbrella of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Heads of Government and other high officials of CARICOM member countries have become steeped in the fallacy that sound bites can replace substance in the pursuit of goals. The truth is that such goals can only be realised through careful planning, hard graft, and a collective determination to see set goals through to the end.
Contextually, there appeared to be a serious attempt to depart from the past in the two recent regional fora held in May in Guyana and Barbados, respectively, particularly reflected in the fact of a higher active level of participation by Heads of Government. Those events focussed not just on setting an agenda for the attainment of the goal of reducing extra-regional food imports by 25% by 2025, but also exploring some of the new challenges confronting the region, arising out of problems ranging from historic underdevelopment to the more contemporary challenges including the challenge of climate change.
Nor can we neglect the need to have ourselves be guided by history. What appears to have been the success of the two recent events in Guyana and Barbados, and what one hopes is the start of a mending of fences between Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago arising out of market access disputes between the two countries, can mark a new beginning for the region.
Given what is expected to be is significant revenues from its oil and gas sector as well as its longer term growth trajectory, Guyana is likely to have to play a significant role in the development of the Caribbean region in the period ahead. “Guyana at this stage – at what I would describe as the cusp of a very significant shift in its growth trajectory long term – is also, by extension, at the cusp of being able to marshal the effort to help the Region in terms of going forward, and the CDB is equally at the same point where it would like to bring that together and coordinate that very focus of development… I think that Guyana becomes a natural ally and partner, both in that sense in terms of its own development and pushing regional development and cooperation to different heights,” is what the President of the Caribbean Development Bank, Hyginus ‘Gene’ Leon was quoted as saying recently.
Guyana’s extraction and export of oil has opened up opportunities for significant transformation of the entire Caribbean region. That said, the point has already been made, elsewhere, that becoming an oil-producing country does not on its own, provide automatic guarantees of prosperity. That applies equally to Guyana. Add that to the fact that, over time, Caribbean governments have been prone to mistakes and miscalculations and we are compelled to remind ourselves that high-sounding pronouncements that are underpinned by little more than hope and optimism are unlikely to ‘cut it’ if the prospects that inhere in the extant opportunity are to be realised and taken advantage of.
