With the Caribbean already having, last year, rolled out several initiatives aimed at shoring its food sufficiency bona fides in the wake the food security ‘shots’ fired across its bows by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the region has moved to roll out a series of initiatives designed to mitigate the likelihood of member countries of CARICOM drifting into the realm of basket cases insofar as food sufficiency is concerned.
The targeting of 2025 as the cutoff point for reducing extra regional food imports by 25% and the ongoing creation of a regional Food Terminal in Barbados are among the high points of the region’s response to threats to its food security bona fides.
Whether these initiatives will, in the final analysis to effectively roll back the food security threat is unclear and individual member countries have been rolling out their own recommendations for the consolidation of their individual food security standings,
Contextually, the Jamaica Observer, earlier this week reported that the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) is making a public call for an aggressive push for enhanced investments in farming technology in the country in order to provide reassurance that the country will not be weighed and found wanting on the issue of food security, going forward.
The Observer of May 17 reports that JAS President Lenworth Fulton is advocating for the appointment of a Special Investment Envoy for the agriculture sector to help amplify the lobby aimed at the realization of two specific goals, a boost in investments in farming and cut in the country’s the food import bill which, last year, reportedly reached a record US$1.4 billion last year.
Fulton, it seems, is aiming to ensure, as far as possible, that Jamaica is in the same page as the rest of CARICOM insofar was the frailty of the region’s food security bona fides are concerned, in circumstances where he believes that Jamaica’s policy makers “only give scant regard for the agricultural sector and the people who make a livelihood off the land,” according to the Observer report. Fulton is quoted in the article as asserting that he didn’t think that “there is any great interest in agriculture” in Jamaica, noting that the country’s Prime Minister’s recent naming of sectorial Special Envoys did not include the agriculture sector.
Nor did Fulton’s criticisms of the state of the country’s agriculture exclude its state-run Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) – a statutory body under the Ministry of Industry Commerce a which serves as the country’s main agricultural extension and rural development agency – which he reportedly said has been a underachiever in terms of its mandate to help Jamaican farmers. Fulton has himself previously served as the entity’s Chief Executive Officer. (CEO).
Addressing the issue of the country’s food import bill which reportedly grew 25 per cent last year to US$1.4 billion on account of “higher spending on imports of cereals and cereal preparations as well as fixed vegetable fats and oils,” Fulton is calling for a plan for agriculture that targets growing crops in Jamaica that can be cultivated economically.
Food imports into Jamaica reportedly accounted for 18 per cent of the country’s overall food import bill last year total goods bought from overseas in 2022. Only fossil fuel imports accounted for a larger share of the import bill, according to The Observer report.
The former RADA Head is quoted in The Observer report as calling for “a policy to tackle the food import bill…………. One which outlines what we are going to import.”
