Guyana’s reputation as ‘the food basket of the Caribbean’ has never, for a moment, been called into question, the consistently enduring performance of our agriculture sector making the point that not only do we produce sufficient to feed ourselves (and this bears no relation to high food prices in our municipal markets) but also to help ‘cover’ for the food deficit that obtains elsewhere in the region. It is, for example, possible to visit our municipal markets, Bourda Market being one of those, and ‘run into’ some of our Caribbean brothers and sisters taking advantage of the abundance of fruit and vegetables, a practice which, while it may attract a level of squeamishness from the phytosanitary buffs, symbolizes the concept of sharing that makes us who we are as a Caribbean people.
While there are no ‘numbers’ on the extent of our response to the food security ‘demons’ that descended upon other parts of the Caribbean in the wake of Hurricane Beryl, the evidence is there to show that Guyana, this time around, as has been the case previously, was very much in the thick of things, making generous contributions which, (who knows?) may well have turned up at moments of dire, perhaps even lift-saving need and even, in some instances, lending immediate-term advice in matters relating to food management. There can be no question than that our own domestic food security bona fides is one of the standout features of our very existence though one feels compelled to repeat that, these days, market prices do us no favours.
If Guyana is both in a position to feed itself as well as to ‘chip in’ in circumstances where maladies like Beryl descend on the region this does not mean that, as a region, we must not extract a ‘lessons learnt’ takeaway from where we are at this time and move resolutely towards what one might call an undertaking that seeks to minimize food security concerns, whenever the issue of food sufficiency rears its head in the region.
The contradiction here reposes in the fact that even as we go into a ‘huddle’ to work out a collective response to immediate-term challenges posed by threats like Hurricane Beryl, we ought to, by now, have ‘worked out’ that the natural disasters that descend on the Caribbean with unmistakable predictability are not going to ‘go away’ miraculously. What is needed is a sustained ‘fight back’ mechanism that must come in the form of ‘food weapons’ with which to ‘cross swords’ with enemies like Hurricane Beryl.
Over time, evidence continues to surface that as individual countries we in the Caribbean tend to ‘think in the moment.’ Why else, given the predictability of the visitations by phenomenon like Beryl, does it appear that when these ‘visitations’ occur we seem to be to be delivering ‘scrambled’ responses? Something has to be seriously wrong with the member countries of CARICOM if they have not, as a ‘Community’ not yet come to terms with the fact that, in the instances of the Beryls of this world, it is not a question of turning up ‘contingencies’ every time bad weather arrives at rampage levels, but setting out – in times of what one might call ‘quiet’ – to build incrementally more robust ramparts which, if these cannot push back bad weather, they can, at least confront some of its worst excesses.
What our experience has shown is that the minimization of threats to the region’s food security credentials ought to rank among the highest of priorities. As it happens, it is one of the region’s priorities in which it appears to have secured only minimal traction up to this time. In contemplating the ravages of Beryl and the particular impact that this has had on our food security bona fides, one cannot help but conclude that there has been an absence of ‘energy’ in the implementation of a regional food security plan and beyond that, no pronouncement from the food security ‘lead heads’ on this matter, the persistent pleadings of the Stabroek News notwithstanding.
Here it has to be said that the Stabroek Business pleads guilty to a certain consistency in raising this matter and moreover, of accusing the ‘lead heads’ and the institution of CARICOM, as a whole, of being ‘soft’ on food security. Truth be told, if the ‘scramble’ to provide an effective food-related response to Hurricane Beryl does not cause the region to put its foot on the accelerator as far as its food security contingency is concerned, then it is quite likely that nothing will.
