Twice in recent days President Bharrat Jagdeo has made a point of bemoaning the chronic indifference of CARICOM countries to the development of their respective agricultural sectors and, by extension, their neglect of the importance of national and regional food security. His observations provide a poignant backdrop to this weekend’s critical forum on investment in the regional agricultural sector as part of the Caribbean’s response to global food shortages and rising prices. The President, it seems, is seeking to make the point that the indifference of the region to its food security has come back to haunt it and perhaps to ensure that the lessons of the past are learnt and that this weekend’s food forum marks a definitive break with the past.

The dilatoriness of the region in the area of food security goes back several decades; so too does Guyana’s advocacy of the importance of promoting regional agriculture. In a sense what President Jagdeo also appears to be saying is that the complex and intensive discourses that will ensue over the next two days could have been extended over the past several years if not the past few decades if the region had been more responsive to earlier warnings of the importance of food security. 

This weekend’s forum, therefore, is, in a sense, a reflection of the irony of the situation in which the region now finds itself and a concession on its part of the errors of its ways. …..