In the weeks preceding the staging of the Caribbean Week of Agriculture [CWA] in October no pains were spared across the region to ‘big up’ the event, coverage of its agenda suggesting that it might well be one of those regional events that might play a pivotal role in helping to turn the proverbial corner in the matter of shoring up what we were being told for several months were our shabby food security bona fides. Media coverage preceding the event left the impression that everybody-who-was-anybody in the realms of agriculture and food security, particularly, would be there, that the deliberations would be intense and that they would be closely anchored to the concerns that had been floating around the region for a year or more, prior, about the Caribbean’s uninspiring food security bona fides.
There had even been some measure of hope expressed in some quarters that CARICOM Heads might use the occasion of the CWA event to release some kind of update on the Food Security Terminal even though persons with some knowledge of the pace of progress towards the completion of the Terminal were dismissing that notion as wishful thinking. These considerations apart, the Stabroek Business recalls that a generous measure of media coverage had been afforded on which officials from the various territories in the region would be travelling to the Bahamas and there had even been a generous measure of information disseminated on the Bahamas’ tourism resource, a perfectly understandable promotional initiative in the face of news that resorts could anticipate a wave of Caribbean people, who at some point in time, might want to get away from the confines of the Conference Hall and ‘throw back.’
To state that the regional media coverage of the forum was well below what might have been expected would be to indulge in considerable understatement. If we take some of the themes that would have been expected to preoccupy the forum – the 25×2025 reduced food import target, possible timelines for pushing back the regional food insecurity scourge on which the UN had announced, how to create conditions in which more Caribbean countries could enhance their domestic food production capabilities and, of course, some sort of indicative timeline for the completion of the Food Security Terminal – it is evident that it was unlikely that there could have been a shortage of issues on which to report. There would, presumably, have been presentations made at the forum, out of which ideas would have emerged that could serve to enhance the pre-existing framework for a regional food security plan.
Nothing of the sort emerged, at least not as far as we have been told, up to this time. Indeed, it appeared that the Nassau Forum begun and ended with the scene-setting reporting on what the Forum was all about. Here the point should be made that the Nassau gathering was expected to be linked to its forerunners which, with the Heads of Government of Guyana and Barbados at the helm, sought to ‘spread the word’ about the food security challenges which the region was facing and disseminating information to the region on the envisaged strategies for turning the situation around. Equally importantly, Nassau does not appear to have helped to agree on any timelines for the strengthening of the region’s food security bona fides, which is, we are told, one of the Caribbean’s foremost priorities at this time. It’s hard to see how, given the timing of the staging of the Nassau Forum, it could end on a note that appears to provide no real clues as to where we are in our food security trek.
