The information reported by the news source, Now Grenada, that the CARICOM member country, Grenada, had begun the process of developing a Food Security Plan of its own provides more than sufficient reason for the Stabroek Business to return to its recurring inquiry regarding the status of the broader regional food security undertaking on a matter in which neither of the two lead countries – Guyana and Barbados – or the CARICOM Secretariat has provided no substantive enlightenment in 2024, notwithstanding the assurances that have been given in a matter of a few months earlier, that the region had moved to treat with a measure of emergency the reports that had made about the prospects of a serious food security deficit in the region.
The fact that Grenada, one of the CARICOM member countries believed to be one of the countries that may be caught up in the wider regional security challenge, has now decided to ‘strike out’ on “the process of developing a Food Security Crisis Preparedness Plan (FSCPP)” of its own that will “define what constitutes a major food and nutrition security crisis for the country in the event of a national/domestic hazard, or external shocks such as a global health pandemic” suggests that it may well have decided not to lay all of its proverbial ‘eggs’ in the wider regional food security basket particularly since it has now been quite a few months since there has been any update on the pace of progress with regard to the establishment of the promised Regional Food Security Terminal.
Here it should be stated that while no one expected that the promised Food Terminal would have been completed in a proverbial jiffy, we have made the point time and again that periodic updates from the two ‘lead’ countries in the wider food security undertaking, Guyana and Barbados, are certainly the appropriate thing to do given the professed importance to the region as a whole. Now that Grenada, reportedly through its Ministry of Agriculture, has embarked on a plan for a Technical Working Group to address the issue of the creation of a “Food Security Crisis Preparedness Plan (FSCPP)” of its own, it is by no means unreasonable to wonder aloud if, at the very least, one of the smaller more potentially food security-vulnerable member countries of CARICOM might not have taken a decision not to simply leave all of its ‘eggs’ lying in the ‘basket of a Regional Food Security Terminal’ which – on the basis of the existing information blackout on its progress – appears to be an unknown quantity in terms of a timeline for completion.
As far as we have been told, the Grenadian government has already executed a preparatory Stakeholders’ Workshop, a circumstance which suggests that the authorities there are not about to sit around speculating about whether and/or when there is going to be any helpful information forthcoming on the wider regional food security terminal. As the Permanent Secretary in Grenada’s Ministry of Agriculture, Isaac Bhagwan, reportedly told the gathering, the April 3 forum “will help define the roles of various organizations and agencies, it will also look at the timeline for the implementation of early warning and look at the institutional framework,” according to the Grenadian official.
Two things are clear about the comment. First, it appears to underscore a certain sense of urgency on the part of the Government of Grenada about the country’s own food security bona fides and the importance of undertaking a robust, immediate initiative of its own in the face of what now appears to have been a considerable slowing down of the wider regional food security undertaking. Secondly, the Grenadian Permanent Secretary would appear – in terms of both tone and content – to be addressing the Grenadian population as a whole. The rest of the region can do worse than keeping an eye of Grenada’s effort to get ahead in pursuit of its food security mission.
