The past few months have brought with them a healthy measure of evidence that having, over many years, remained decidedly indifferent to its food security vulnerability, not least what, in most Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member territories, continues to be varying levels of dependence on extra-regional food imports, the region is seemingly now prepared to frontally address the issue. One uses the term ‘frontally,’ of course, having regard to the region’s embarrassing record of ‘false starts’ in this matter.
At the level of public events, this year, 2022 has witnessed an unprecedented regional focus on food security, that focus having been triggered by the sounding of a global alarm over food shortages and the consequences for populations in the world’s worst-affected countries. CARICOM member states, it has to be said, have continually ‘blown hot and cold’ over food security for a number of years, the past decade and more having been characterized by undertakings on enhancing food security that have caught attention for their rhetoric and little more.
Unquestionably, global events appeared to attach a somewhat greater sense of urgency on the issue of food security. Here in the Caribbean, this year, we witnessed a high profile focus on the regional food security deficiencies in a manner that had not previously been witnessed. What was perhaps most significant this time around, was the willingness of some Heads of Government to insert themselves directly into the process, notably the Heads of Government of Guyana, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Antigua.
The interest of the mentioned Heads of Government meant that public events pertaining to regional food security were ‘pitched’ at a higher level, with high profile programmes being executed, first, in Guyana and afterwards in Barbados. These events attracted of attention of other regional Heads of Government including Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley. It was out of these fora that appeared to come a more cohesive understanding of the need to fashion (and expeditiously execute) a regional food security blueprint that addressed a broad range of issues including the maximizing of agricultural production, the logistics of an intra-regional plan for ensuring the movement of food across the region, and a structured plan for the significant reduction of extra-regional food imports.
Here, it should be noted that Caribbean territories have not remained unaffected by the wider global hue and cry over continually rising food prices and the particular impact of this phenomenon on the populations in countries not known to be major food producers. Once again, the issues of agricultural sustainability and food security in the Caribbean were knocking on CARICOM’s front door, this time, with a much greater sense of urgency. Nor did it go unrecorded that the food security crisis that appeared to be looming in the Caribbean was likely to be rendered even worse by the threat of accelerating climate change.
What has long been widely known, but rather less appreciated, is that, collectively, the Caribbean Community has the capacity to secure a considerable level of food security through its own (regional) effort but that the attainment of this goal means that member countries needed to work together.
Following the earlier event in Guyana subsequent high-profile ‘food security’ events were held, first, in Barbados and afterwards in Trinidad and Tobago. Collectively, these fora served to raise regional awareness of the importance of food security though the pieces of the puzzle still remain to be put together.
Since then there have been other less well-publicized fora where issues that include raising popular awareness in the region of the importance of food security and as far as possible, ‘weaning’ the Caribbean off of extra-regional food imports and putting in place logistical arrangements to ensure the efficient movement across the Caribbean have been ventilated. Intra-regional discourses have also taken place on the importance of the realization of a sustainable region wide food production regime, accelerating intra-regional discourse on how to sustain the resilience of the agriculture sector and “creating investment opportunities for egional producers/entities across the agriculture value chain.”
That said, concerns over CARICOM’s track record as it relates to the continuity that has attended previous vocal ‘commitments’ to regional food security remain,
The challenges which the region faces if its is to respond effectively to what is being touted as a food security emergency include what a recent food security-related forum in Trinidad and Tobago described as the need to “strengthen the foundation for a climate responsive agricultural sector in the Caribbean by raising the profile of the agriculture sector’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) climate financing prioritization processes by implementing an evidence-based and inter-sectorial strategy for developing and rebranding Caribbean agriculture as “low emissions” in order to “enhance market opportunities and attract private sector investments.” A media report emanating from Trinidad and Tobago alluded to a July 27-28 CaricomAGReady GCF Project in that country ‘hosted by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) in collaboration with the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute (GHGMI) and the Caribbean Measurement, Reporting and Verification Hub, nine CARICOM members, and attended by representatives of The Bahamas, Belize, Dominica, Haiti, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, (Guyana, perhaps surprisingly, was not represented at that forum) participated in the related workshop. The goal of the project a Trinidad and Tobago media report said, was “to strengthen the foundation for a climate responsive agricultural sector in the Caribbean. This, it is envisaged, will be realized by “raising the profile of the agriculture sector’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) climate financing prioritization processes” through the implementation of an “evidence-based and inter-sectorial strategy for developing and rebranding Caribbean agriculture as “low emissions” to enhance market opportunities and attract private sector investments.”
The decided long-windedness of the objective of this forum notwithstanding, what is does is to underscore the weighty nature of the region’s overall assignment if it is to make meaningful headway in pursuit of its food security goal.
If all of the various strands that need to be pulled together to accomplish the various food security benchmarks which the region has set itself – not least the 25×2025 goal – several things have got to be sorted out. The first has to do with the readiness of member countries to subscribe, politically, that is, to a common acceptance of a food security challenge, since in the absence of that common subscription, the pursuit will simply never really get started. The second concern has to do with whether member states of CARICOM possess either the political and institutional stamina to carry through with what is, in effect, a ‘long haul’ agenda that will place a heavy ‘burden’ on key local institutions including those responsible for the various facets of food production. The third has to do with whether the political administrations in the respective countries of the region (given their mostly limited occupancy of office) are all going to be able to get their food producers, particularly farmers, to ‘buy into’ the notion of a common food security objective. Fourthly, we are going to have to ensure that the CARICOM machinery is both adequately equipped and intellectually disposed to playing its part in the process.
The same, undoubtedly, has to be said for the various other relevant regional institutions (The CDB and CARDI are excellent examples of those ‘other institutions) in the region that are expected to ‘lead the way,’ Guyana, of course, among CARICOM member states, will have a critical role to play.
