At a time when there has been something of a lull in the flow of information regarding the progress being made in what, admittedly, is the opening ‘stanza’ of the implementation of the regional so-called 25×2025 plan to reduce extra regional food imports, the news that St. Lucia appears to be taking its own steps to respond to its own food security challenges is to be commended.
St. Lucia’s initiative is even more noteworthy when account is taken of the fact that agriculture in Trinidad and Tobago is being compromised by flooding and that, reportedly, this has resulted in threats by farmers in T&T to ‘walk away’ from their farms until the rainy season is over.
We must, of course, take into account, as well, the fact that the full force of the ‘rainy season’ that habitually ravages large parts to Guyana has not yet materialized, bearing in mind that Guyana is, by some distance the region’s unquestioned food basket, and, moreover, that Guyana’s contribution to the creation of the envisaged Regional Food Terminal is critical.
St. Lucia, we are advised, through a recent News Americas media report, has “rolled out a number of government programs to increase food security, boosting its agricultural production and minimizing its reliance on imports.” Frankly, it is more than a little heartening to learn of St. Lucia’s reported growing pursuit of efforts to enhance its domestic food security credentials. This suggests that St. Lucia is very much among the countries in the region that are mindful of the extant global food security crisis and of the likelihood that it could grow worse. Contextually, it must be commended for its efforts to seek to stave off a security crisis of its own.
These are by no means times in which we can afford to spare CARICOM’s feelings over its protracted dilatoriness, over a number of years, in the matter of acting with a sense of urgency to fashion the promised framework for what we are now describing as a regional food terminal. Here, much of the responsibility must be placed at the feet of Guyana which, particularly, has been decidedly ineffective in leading the way in the matter of regional food security, up until now.
Recently, word came from the Barbados Agriculture Minister Indar Weir on the progress of the recently agreed food terminal project though we must wait to see it through to its conclusion before we begin – as is the practice – to crow about its accomplishment.
This raises the question, surely, as to whether, a mechanism should not now be inserted into the process that allows for the periodic updating of the countries of the region on the pace of progress towards the full establishment of the Food Terminal initiative. That responsibility, one is inclined to suggest, should fall to the CARICOM Secretariat. It would be an error of significant proportions if the people of the Caribbean were to allow regional governments to ‘go quiet’ on them in the matter of the creation of a facility that might well make a difference between sufficiency and crisis for some Caribbean territories in the period ahead.
Such responsibility accruing to Guyana in the matter of the successful implementation of the Food Terminal project places the ‘burden’ on the country’s agriculture sector, more particularly the state-run institutions, to ‘hold up its end.’ Guyana must constantly remind itself that the rest of the region is relying on us to deliver.
To return to the measures that have already reportedly been taken in the matter of its own food security, there very much appears to be a significant measure of forward thinking in the St. Lucia initiative. That initiative would appear to have been underpinned by the assumption that (given what remains the imponderable of determining a time frame for an end to Russia’s hostilities in Ukraine) it would, at this time, be foolhardy to hazard a guess in the matter of an end to the prevailing global food security challenge that is probably likely to become worse before it gets better.
Setting aside the wider global imponderables associated with food security, going forward, the island territories of the region have their own ever present ‘demons’ to fight in the form of their collective vulnerability to inclement weather, hurricanes, no less, that perennially threaten their very existence. This, when it is added to a condition of incrementally worsening climate change, arguably challenges CARICOM member countries, like never before, to be their brothers’ keepers.
