GEORGETOWN, Guyana – President Dr. Irfaan Ali Friday urged Caribbean countries to move away from the consumption of poor-quality food and called on the region’s population to eat agricultural products grown in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) region.
Addressing the Regional Food Systems Dialogue, which is a precursor to the United Nations 2021 Food Systems Summit scheduled for September, President Ali said it is time that Caribbean people remind themselves of the importance of eating local, regionally and utilizing products from with the 15-member regional grouping.
“We cannot continue to eat third quality or second quality when we can produce first quality… we have to be brave in addressing these issues. We can’t walk along the sidelines anymore,” Ali said as he delivered the feature address at the regional dialogue.
The Guyana-based CARICOM Secretariat has partnered with key regional stakeholders including the United Nations Resident Coordinators, the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO, the World Food Program (WFP), and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) to host the virtual event.
Farmers, policymakers, non-governmental organizations, businesses, and civil society participated in the event with CARICOM agriculture ministers chairing the three sessions on climate change, Caribbean food systems, finance and funding for the new Caribbean food systems and food production and security, a Caribbean imperative.
The CARICOM Secretariat said that the ideas, solutions, and action plans emanating from this dialogue will feed into the Global forum that is part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
Ali, who has lead responsibility for Agriculture in the quasi-CARICOM Cabinet, said that while efforts can be taken within the region to tackle food security, the CARICOM needs the help of external agencies especially in light of its vulnerability to climate change.
“The Caribbean region has been named as the second most hazard prone region in the world, largely owing to its vulnerability and exposure to multiple extreme and frequent hazard events,” Ali said, adding “it is therefore imperative that attention is given to building climate resilience in order to transform the region’s agri-food systems”.
He said progress towards achieving the SDGs requires a commitment from all member states for affirmative action with respect to climate change.
He recalled the Jagdeo initiative, dating back to 2007, which is a strategy for removing constraints to the development of agriculture in the Caribbean. It builds upon past regional efforts to develop a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and identifies ten key binding constraints faced by the sector.
“Foremost among those constraints was limited financing and new investments in the sector. The initiative proposed the development of a fund to modernize regional agriculture. But financing for regional agriculture cannot be divorced from financing for climate resilience,” he said.
He said the success of the regional effort in agriculture will depend on the degree of international support, especially in respect to financing in building an agricultural sector that is more resilient.
“Financing for sustainable development is of equal importance,” he said, recalling an intervention he made at a UN High Level conference earlier this week on the extractive sector.
“I said then that without greater access to financing efforts by small states to meet their commitments under the Paris Agreement …will be derailed”.
He urged regional countries to seize the opportunities of the September UN food systems summit ‘to link greater resilience with increased access to financing sustainable development.
Ali said that the Caribbean “must add its voice to the full implementation of the Addis Abba Action Agenda for a third international conference on financing for development. He said there was also need for greater base financing for the establishment of a climate change vulnerability fund.
Earlier, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, the lead head of state on the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), told the conference that she hopes the region accepts the fact “that we need to expedite the process of producing as much food regionally as we can and that we need to come together, accepting that the true bread baskets of the region will be Guyana, Suriname and Belize.
“But that does not remove from the rest of us the obligation of producing as much food as we can,” she said, acknowledging that while there are some difficulties, they should be confronted.
“The first and foremost is the potential normal access for cheaper food from outside of the region, and therefore the question as to how we treat to the whole issue of food security, allowing us to anchor our domestic policies and our trade policies becomes absolutely critical”
Mottley said also that the region “cannot afford to only have the need to grow food when there is a crisis.
“Our farmers need certainty to be able to produce food year-round. It means that there will be some need for some level of protection because they simply cannot withstand the onslaught of cheaper prices from outside where they have the benefit of scale.
“Unless we confront this frontally, we will put at risk our own national security and the well-being of our citizens. The bottom line is our farmers can only produce consistently if they are given the platform and the environment within which to do so”.
The Barbados Prime Minister said also another problem is the fact that there are too few people school in the rudiments of good farming and agricultural practices.
“We do not have a strong enough research agenda and it is incomprehensible for me how that can be the case when as far back as the 19th century, my own country led the world with respect to research in cane…as we exploited the reality of cane agriculture as it was then.”
Mottley said there was also a need to infuse technology into Caribbean agriculture, saying “we use cell phones now…in order to be able to communicate to do work to do all kinds of things and the ability to use technology whether in the form of drone technology or other forms of technology …while at the same time not impearling the quality of food that is produced is absolutely essential”.
But she acknowledged that technology is expensive ;and therefore it is critical that we as a region coordinate to be able to secure the best prices wherever possible and not only within our region should that collaboration take place”,
