One of the ‘marketing promos’ for the October 9-13 Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) promises “a week of amazing activities and events,” a promotional ‘line’ that gives reason to remind the organizers that the event is not (as far as this newspaper is aware) intended to be a ‘theatre affair.’
The ‘blurb,’ truth be told, bears a much closer resemblance to an event designed to parade the pleasing accomplishments of the region’s agriculture. That too would be grossly misleading, given that the overwhelming majority of the countries that will be represented in The Bahamas have only recently been ‘tagged’ by the United Nations as afflicted with “moderate to severe levels of food insecurity.”
Truth be told, given the somewhat ‘touristy’ underpinning that attends some of the promotion that has attended the 2023 CWA number speeches and exhibitions, outsiders could well be fooled into thinking that undertakings like the ongoing creation of an emergency Regional Food Terminal, a decidedly practical pursuit given the unimpressive food security bona fides in a number of CARICOM member countries, will be mere sideshows that have nothing to do with the various recent far from encouraging pronouncements on the state of food security in the region.
Contextually, the organizers of CWA 23 must be advised, prior to the commencement of proceedings in Nassau, that if all that we will get out of the forum will be a hastily crafted final communique then questions are almost certain to be raised as to why we had troubled ourselves to stage the event, in the first place.
If this observation may well not please either the governments of the region nor the bureaucracy within the CARICOM setup, the Stabroek Business wishes to draw attention to the fact that CWA 23 comes in the wake of the recent ‘fail grade’ handed the region, as a whole, by the United Nations. Put differently, the reality is that the various heavily bureaucratized undertakings that the region has undertaken over the years to secure a measure of overall food security fashion (in which Guyana has been ‘tagged’ as a kind of helmsman) have all fallen flat on their faces.
Here, the cynical amongst us might argue that the recent uncomplimentary pronouncements on our food security status by the UN and other agencies is a reflection of the decided wooliness of our food security undertakings, over the years. Failures, it is widely felt, have derived from the region’s incurable propensity of ‘talking things to death.’
This, indeed, is believed to be one of the primary reasons why, up to this time, we have made not a great deal of headway on the regional food security front. What we have learnt, over the years, about the Caribbean’s approach to solving challenges, including the food security ones, is that that approach is characterized by a tendency to ignore the ironclad reality that in matters such as food security, the noise in the market is not the sale. Truth be told there is really little to shout about in the matter of regional food security when, on the one hand, Guyana’s agricultural sector spares the populace the ignominy of having to miss meals, whilst some of our sister CARICOM member countries are afflicted with food insecurity-related diseases.
Much as we would have preferred to have CWA 23 staged against the backdrop of a succession of even modest accomplishments in the region’s collective drive towards food security, this, on the virtual eve of CWA 23 is decidedly not the case. The reality is that even the glitzy event promotional ‘offerings’ notwithstanding, CWA 23 is being staged against the backdrop of very real food security emergencies in several CARICOM member countries…and while envisaged remedial measures like 25×2025 and the creation of a Regional Food Security Terminal are seen as likely (partial) solutions to the problem, neither of these is anywhere near being completely realized at this time.
If CWA 2023 is, in large measure, being promoted as a sort of Blue Ribbon event attended by eye-catching sideshows, that is certainly not what (one assumes) it is intended to be. The aggressively promoted ‘high level’ presentations and likely protracted sit-down sessions (almost certainly with quite a few coffee breaks in between) thrown in for good measure, must count for outcomes that go way beyond turgid and tedious communiques that talk a lot but provides no clear and practical path towards the Caribbean finding its way past its formidable food security challenges.
If the forum fails in that regard then its final outcomes are likely to be ignored by the vast majority of the people of the region who will treat them as pronouncements and declarations designed to do no more than kick the regional food security can further down the road.
