The recent announcement that over a period of less than a year Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member countries had realized 57% of its declared target of reducing their extra regional food imports by 25% by 2025 would have come as a surprise, perhaps even a profound shock, to the people of the region. After all, it was just a matter of a handful of months ago that the countries in the region with no meaningful track record to speak of about, had been said to be afflicted by food insecurity. The agreed game plan going forward from that disturbing juncture was that the push towards the 25×2025 goal would be anchored largely through the Regional Food Terminal the creation of which had been assigned largely to Guyana and Barbados.
While the region as a whole has been mostly silent in this regard, it is fair to say that the efforts of some countries in the region – Guyana and Barbados being foremost among them – to play up the various recent regional food security undertakings to the people of the region, as a whole, will find it hard to ignore the previous food security undertakings by the region that had fallen flat on their faces. Even now, failure to provide regular and reliable updates on the pace of progress of the much-vaunted Food Security Terminal initiative is giving rise to some level of inquiry given what we are told is the nexus between getting the terminal up and running and creating some kind of buffer zone to help ward of the food security threat that hovers over parts of the Caribbean. This raises the question as to whether far less than merited attention is being given to keeping the people of the region continually updated on the unfolding of what we are told is one of the region’s critical food security missions.
If the people of the region are to come ‘on board’ with what we are told has been a 57% ‘leap forward’ in the cut in extra regional food imports in less than a year then, surely, there ought, by now, to have been some kind of explanation as to just how we got there so quickly and exactly what is the prognosis for us realizing 100% of the target within the time frame left. Up to this time the ‘accomplishment,’ which has been credited largely to Guyana’s contribution, has been handed to us with a decided paucity of detail. This accomplishment, or at least what progress has been made towards its realization, ought to have handed to us during the First CARICOM Ministerial Task Force (MTF) meeting on Food Production and Food Security meeting for 2023 back in February. It was there that a bewildering array of production statistics setting down the performances of the agricultural sectors in the various countries of the region were trotted out.
These statistics provided reason for some measure of celebration though, going forward, the issues of, first, whether there is a prognosis for region meeting the remaining 43% of the target over the next 18 months or so (or whether the remaining of the journey is going to be something of a struggle) remains unclear. Truth be told if we had asked the people of the various member countries a year ago whether or not we would have been able to accomplish so much so quickly in terms of getting this close to the 25×2025 goal the response would almost certainly been a negative one. The skepticism would have derived from what we know to be, first, the weaknesses of the food production infrastructure in a number of CARICOM member countries, particularly the smaller ones, and secondly the high dependence of those member countries with tourism-driven economies on extra-regional food imports, a condition which, as far as we have been made aware, still persists.
The rationale for the decidedly uplifting statistic would appear to have derived from what we are told are CARICOM member countries’ reports that proffered production data for 2022 for targeted commodities, including cocoa, dairy, meat, root crops, fruits, and poultry, which products, reportedly “have already reached 96.13 per cent, 84.36 per cent, 72.28 per cent, 70.91 per cent, 70.77 per cent and 70.19 per cent, respectively, for the targeted production volume set for 2025.” More than that, we are told that Guyana, Belize, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Dominica, and Jamaica have made “significant advances in the production of commodities such as ginger, turmeric, corn, soya bean, root crops, fruits, cocoa, poultry, meat, fish, table eggs, and dairy.” The report also provided production statistics from Guyana for crops such as ginger, turmeric, root crops, coconuts and fish, all of which are part of the region-wide diet and can therefore help to erect a stronger regional food security foundation.
If these statistics suggest that the portents for meeting the 25×2025 target are promising, all of this has to be tied in with the ability of the region to develop a strategic plan to move food across the region in a manner that particularly targets countries of the region whose food security bona fides are fragile. For as long as the Food Terminal assignment persists, the realization of that objective will be delayed.
