To their credit, what President Irfaan Ali and Prime Minister Mia Mottley were able to accomplish, through the fashioning of last year’s food display events in Guyana and Barbados, was the creation of a much wider regional focus on the food security bona fides of the region as a whole.
In both instances, the initiatives of the two CARICOM Heads served to attract the attention and the participation of other CARICOM Heads to heighten regional awareness of the food security vulnerabilities of the region and to give rise to and mark regional food security-related initiatives.
Not least of these were the agreements to create a Regional Food Security Terminal in Barbados, and a collective commitment to a 25% reduction in extra-regional food imports by year 2025. In raising the profile of food security in the Caribbean through their efforts last year, what President Ali and Prime Minister Mottley in effect did was to create a region-wide expectation of continuity, if only because it appeared to have been agreed, across the Caribbean, that the two sets of events had served to focus attention on regional food security to an extent that had not been accomplished previously.
Here, it should be noted that the events held in Guyana and Barbados, and the wider understanding that derived therefrom, coincided with the revelation that, contrary to what seemingly had been thought here in the Caribbean, the region was indeed afflicted with a fair measure of regional food insecurity. It was a sobering discovery which, rather than dwell on previously abysmally failed attempts to settle on and diligently implement a food security agenda in the region, sought to kick-start a new initiative. Within a matter of months, developments like the commencement of the regional food hub underlined the seriousness of last year’s initiative. What would also have further galvanized the movers and shakers behind what came to be seen as a ‘new awakening’ in the Caribbean was the news emanating from the World Food Programme that there had been a “sharp rise’ in food insecurity in the Caribbean.
By announcing recently that Agro Fest 2023 will be staged from February 24-26, the Government of Prime Minister Mottley has signalled its intention to lend continuity to the momentum created by herself and President Ali. Apart from demonstrating the productive capacity of the region’s agriculture and agro-processing sectors, events emanating from Agro-Fest 2023 will, hopefully, serve to give impetus to the most recent initiative undertaken by the region – to demonstrate its ability to work together to boost its food security credentials. Agro-Fest must also serve as a forum to review the extent to which various regional food security undertakings, illuminated by President Ali and Prime Minister Mottley (here, the 25×2025 undertaking comes to mind), will benefit from meaningful disclosures regarding progress that has been made.