Making a plea to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) that its forum here be one with tangible outcomes, President Irfaan Ali yesterday said that countries must show how the regional bloc will ensure food and nutrition security while reducing poverty.
“We must produce the action plan. You are not here to dwell on the problems. That is what every conference will do. You are here as the policymakers to craft policies in a regional settings by learning from each other; best practices so that we can learn and maybe to unlearn. Maybe we are doing something that we think is right that we need to unlearn,” Ali told the opening of a high-level meeting with ministers of agriculture and representatives of CELAC countries.
The President underscored that the focus on food security needs to be swift, as global statistics show that Latin America and the Caribbean saw the number of hungry people increase by 13.2 million during the 2019-2021 period alone. He posited that if not addressed, those numbers could increase.
“The prevalence of hunger was 7.9 per cent in South America and 18.4 per cent in the Caribbean. Sometimes, we are of the mistaken view in CARICOM that all is well. The moderate food insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean was higher than the global average. We were higher than the global average,” Ali informed.
Ali, who is the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) leader responsible for food security, said that producing more food and integrating food security objectives of respective countries, while simultaneously reducing poverty and inequality, remains the key to ensuring food and nutrition security in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“So we can’t speak about this nutrition in the region and food security if we don’t also bring into the discourse, poverty reduction strategies and reducing inequality… this is very important to what we are doing.”
Fed up with talk and no actions to back the plans suggested at various high level meetings he has attended, Ali charged that representatives should come to high level fora with respective country and overall plans and discuss ways on how those can be integrated for the good of CELAC.
“How do we see ourselves in CELAC? As a collective whole or just a collective whole for conferences and symposiums? This meeting should highlight all the deficiencies in the trade system in this region that disallows our people from experiencing lower cost food, better nutrition, and better security. How will we treat investment within the CELAC family…?” he questioned.
“What are the types of policies that you will recommend at the end of this conference? Policies that are so comprehensive that you must think of adopting them throughout the region. What are those policies? What is the signal you want to send to our development partners? Our farmers face the challenge of recapitalization every time they get a hurricane or flood or mudslide. How do we address that? The development financing system has no mechanism to address it. We have to be able at this conference, not to be able to rehash the problem, but to be able to formulate policies and solutions. To point to your own difficulties,” he said.
Ali called on representatives to “have a frank conversation” so that they may be able to “articulate the link” between what they do to ensure “national prosperity in every single country.”
Impactful
“And once you are able to do that I think we will able to have a very impactful conference and one that feeds into many other things that CELAC is looking at,” he added.
With ministers or high authorities of agriculture from the 33 member states in the room, the Guyanese Head of State asked. “How many ministers today came with an investment guide for food production in their countries? Does a guide exist? How can you develop an investment guide for food production in CELAC? Do we have a register of the opportunities in this region for investors wanting to invest in agriculture?”
“…If we are bringing CELAC together, where are the CELAC opportunities? Where is the CELAC investment guide on agriculture? Where are the CELAC projections?” he further asked.
Realistic objectives, Ali reasoned, should be set so that when the representatives return to their policymakers, their plans of action could be easily implemented. “What are the targets what do you guys want to achieve? You must leave this conference by saying to the policymakers for the people of CELAC this is what you must do and this is the action plan,” Ali said.
And as he lamented the absence of health, education and technology from the region’s mission to increase food production and eat healthy, he contended that they are all linked to poverty reduction.
“Food production and nutrition is about good health and good health and food production is about national prosperity. And national prosperity is about national security,” he asserted.
Addressing not just food security challenges but the health of citizens of the region, he said that the health sector also has a role to play in ensuring this. “If we don’t have a health sector that understands the linkage between food production and food security and what they do, then we’ll have a mismatch. We will not have an alignment of policies.”
The President related that the moderate food insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean was higher than the global average but many persons do not realise this. He pointed out that in discussions with local school children about food security, all believe that the greatest increase in hunger and nutrition per region was from Africa.
“Everybody said Africa. The fact is, we in the Caribbean and Latin America had the greatest change, downwards than any other region in the world. Latin America and the Caribbean had the highest cost. It is not only the value. Importantly, we had the highest cost of a healthy diet compared to the other regions. So we have a supply problem, we have an eating problem, we have a systemic problem, but now we also have an economic problem. The model we are using to feed the people in our region has resulted in the highest cost of a healthy diet.
“Something is wrong, so we have to look at this matter in a comprehensive manner. The existing framework is not working. Whatever we are doing at this moment has given the people of our region the highest cost for a healthy diet.”
For his part, Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha said that the meeting was an important milestone in CELAC’s collective pursuit of strengthening food and nutrition security in the Latin America and Caribbean Region.
“In light of the high food insecurity in the Region, this forum provides a useful opportunity to update the CELAC Plan for Food Security and Nutrition in line with the current context, even as it allows for national commitments towards achieving the SDG [Sustainable Development Goal] of zero hunger. The agenda before us in this meeting will allow us to deliberate on the progress of the CELAC Food Security and Nutrition Plan and how the implementation of Regional Initiatives like the CARICOM Agri-Food Systems Agenda, will help the Region to reduce food insecurity,” he was quoted as saying.
Guyana’s Minister of Agriculture reasoned that as the countries embark on the goal of Regional Food Security, they must all be cognizant of the pressing challenges that confront respective nations’ agriculture sectors. “The Caribbean and Latin American region is particularly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change, which poses a significant threat to our agricultural productivity and the well-being of our communities. We continue to witness firsthand, the rising frequency of extreme weather events, the degradation of our natural resources, and the mounting pressures on food production and distribution systems.”
He added, “Other recent events that contributed to the region’s worsened food insecurity are the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict; the effects of which, continue to be felt not only by the region, but globally, mainly as a result of the interruptions to the food supply chains. However, amidst these challenges, lies tremendous opportunity. By coming together, pooling our collective wisdom, and leveraging our shared resources, we can chart a transformative path forward for our agricultural food systems. By collaborating and sharing our experiences and knowledge, we can effectively tackle the pressing issues impacting our agricultural sectors.”
And while he acknowledged that the task before them may not be an easy one, Mustapha expressed optimism that the decisions coming out of yesterday’s discussions have “the potential to create lasting impacts that will benefit our nations for generations to come.”
