The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on Friday April 21 launched a series of webinar conversations designed to focus attention on what has become the high-profile issue of the urgent shoring up of the region’s food security credentials. With updates on key Caribbean food security issues having been few and far between since the disclosures several months ago on the launch of a regional food terminal and the region’s 25 x 2025 commitment, the Food For Lunch was expected to raise, once again the profile of the Caribbean’s food security status even as international agencies continue to sound ominous warnings about what they say is a likely worsening global food security status quo.
Food for Lunch, the name given to the forum, holds a special significance for Guyana, which is being looked to as the ‘anchor’ for the wider regional initiative to shore up the region’s food security bona fides in the period ahead. The panel for last Friday’s inaugural Food For Lunch webinar conversation reflected a heavy private sector bias that included local supermarket Chain, Bounty Farms Assistant Managing Director, David Fernandes; Managing Director of Republic Bank Ltd., Stephen Grell; Chief Commercial Officer, Alquimi Renewables LLC, Ralph Birkhoff and Teesha Mangra-Singh, Chief Executive Officer, One Guyana Agriculture Inc. What observers around the region would have been concerned about, however, is the extent to which the Food for Lunch exercises did inject a further sense of urgency into the region’s focus on shoring up its food security bona fides or whether the forum simply metamorphosed in ‘Talk Shops’ that did little to enhance the sense of urgency associated with regional food security.