The Caribbean has the potential to improve its agricultural sector by exploring some of its dormant or overlooked natural resources.
This revelation was made at an European Union (EU) Agriculture Fisheries and Food Processing Regional Webinar held on Thursday.
During the webinar, the discussion explored the possibility of increasing the European Union’s import share from CARIFORUM nations, comprising the 15 member states of Caricom and the Dominican Republic (DR).
Tamira La Cruz, EU international economic development specialist explained there were several ways for the CARIFORUM to further expand its agricultural output, not only to address local food security but also to create trade opportunities with European Union.
She listed six potential opportunities for CARIFORUM concerning trade during her presentation in the webinar.
“Cariforum now imports about 15.5 billion euros in food imports annually. The EU share of imports is 7.5 per cent. So there’s a lot of room for growth. It is true also that over the past five years, the EU sales to Caricom has increased by 70 per cent,” said La Cruz, “There are opportunities and high value-added products from the EU typical European products and also because of the high tourist dependence tourism dependents of the region.”
She noted that as part of CARICOM’s 25 by 2025 initiative, countries like Guyana, Suriname and Barbados have already made significant investments in agricultural development, which could signal a change in these numbers in time.
However, she explained that more could be done to address food security through further local investment in the sector.
She explained that currently, the Dominican Republic led the way in terms of self-sustainability from a food standpoint.
“It’s interesting to note that the DR produces about 80 per cent of its food for local consumption. Whereas Caricom produces less than 80 per cent,” she said, “There is an opportunity, especially in the countries with large land masses. DR. Guyana and Suriname will be helpful. Barbados is already investing in Guyana.”
She said in this regard, the EU could help CARIFORUM raise its standards in food production.
“From interviews, we know that the EU in quality is superior to many others. The EU standards are similar to those in CARIFORUM, which makes it easy to sell to CARIFORUM people in the sector,” she said, “So that presents an opportunity to sell or invest positional inputs. The fifth opportunity is to sell and invest in agritech to increase efficiency and quality. I think someone also mentioned that just now you can see the list here of things that have been mentioned by interviews in the region that are needed. That’s a lot of room for efficiency improvements.”
While these points represented traditional approaches to improving food security in the region, it was a presentation by CEO and chief executive activist of Ocean by Origin, Mari Granström, that revealed there were less traditional methods to build trade routes with European partners.
Ocean by Origin has been purchasing sargassum seaweed from a company in the Dominican Republic and utilising the seaweed to create new products.
Granström noted that sargassum overgrowth had become not only a nuisance to beachgoers, but also a problem for marine biology and her company had found a way to turn this problem into a solution.
“We have an excess of nutrients in our waterways and oceans, in phosphorous and nitrogen. So this is what happens when we exceed a certain concentration of these nutrients in these waterways; we start to see these harmful and invasive algae blooms taking place,” said Granström. “This is our solution: We use sargassum as a feedstock in our refinery and we turn that into an algae-based functional ingredient,” she said, ‘When we do that and when we replace these oil-based ingredients, we can de-carbonise the consumer goods. So the dependency on oil can be reduced.”
She explained that while Sargussum had started becoming problematic in Europe, with the seaweed showing up in beaches in Spain and Portugal as well as the US, there was record-breaking presence in the Caribbean.
“This is something that’s a satellite picture of the region and every year we have around 25 million tonnes of Sargassum blooming around there. I think we are underestimating the number. Today I think it’s even higher so this year has been kind of the record of the Sargassum blooms and no one really knows currently what we are facing. “So we are active in the Dominican Republic, and we have started to build a supply chain of Sargassum there. And here are some pictures of the very successful work that we have done together with the local partners. And I want to highlight here the fact that the earlier person was talking about how to bring know how to build the value chain in the region. I think one of the key things is that you have to have some understanding about the local infrastructure and also the local players because they are you know, experts in that field,” she said. She added that it was important to partner with regional companies so that they too could learn to address the problem which was at their doorstep.
“We wanted to search for local companies, so that we can empower the local community to work on this Sargassum problem because they are the ones who are facing it every day. We are in Finland, which is very far away from the Caribbean. So it’s important that the local people can work on the problem,” she said.
Swedish-born but Tobago-based businessman Lars Söderström also stressed that the Caribbean could see benefits for its traditional agriculture sectors through innovative use and development of products. Söderström is the creator of Tobago Gold, a chocolate liqueur which was born out of cocoa tea. Soderstrom noted his award-winning drink had brought new life to his cocoa estate which he initially bought in 2004 with the intention of creating a chocolate factory that never came to fruition.
He said instead he found success from using a traditional Caribbean recipe, refining and adding to it before selling to an international market.
He also added other avenues could be explored for cocoa in the Caribbean.
“We own a cocoa estate. We’ve done rehabilitation in Trinidad and Tobago. We developed value-added products and I will make a presentation later on. There is a potential for carbon credits in this area and something that we are discussing in Trinidad and Tobago, in both the cocoa and the chocolate industry. I don’t think it is a major driver behind your revenues but it does have potential to be a supplementary income,” he said.
Trinidad and Tobago Guardian July 23, 2023
