If there was a single area in which Caricom could have partially shielded itself from the global onslaught of collapsing financial markets, depressed commodity prices, harsher terms of trade, spiralling budgetary deficits and the ever diminishing pools of cheaper financing it was the diminution of its annual food import bill. At last count it was a staggering US$3b but probably higher considering the vast under-invoicing and smuggling in the regional market place.
Sadly, the vehicle for transforming regional agriculture – The Jagdeo Initiative – is stalled and the outcome of last week’s Caricom Heads of Govern-ment conference did little to silence the twittering about the failure of the region to take decisive action to propel the sector. Despite the declaration on food security appended to the communiqué it was as if agriculture was still struggling to be placed at the centre of the region’s strategy to cut its food import bill, ease the financial squeeze, create jobs and draw the community members closer to each other by virtue of a massive, shared enterprise. The gravity of the food security problem clearly seized last week’s G-8 meeting to the extent that it shocked observers by pledging US$20b to help poor countries feed themselves. Caricom has it within its ability to avoid being the recipient of such handouts though the signs are not reassuring. Dominica – even though benefiting from the Venezuelan largesse via ALBA – on Friday made a formal request to the International Monetary Fund for US$5m under the Rapid-Access Component of the Exogenous Shocks Facility. St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines have already made such requests. A statement from the Dominican Prime Minister’s office said “The resources from the Exogenous Shocks Facility would help meet the immediate foreign exchange needs stemming from the decline of export receipts and weaker capital account inflows resulting from the impact on the economy of the global economic and financial crisis”, exactly the kind of condition that the Jagdeo Initiative can address.
Prior to the conference of heads, Stabroek News spoke with Mr Sam Lawrence, Advisor to the Regional Transformation Programme for Agricul-ture and he said frankly “Our level of productivity has not gone anywhere near to meeting the needs of the population and where there is increased production, the cost is not commensurate and competitive to those of the imported products so people find an opportunity for importing to the region”. He contended that the absence of a regional harmonization of policies was hampering the progress of the agricultural initiative. What can be interpreted from his comment is that essentially each member was pulling in different directions and playing to their domestic audience – a metaphor for the general moribund state that the community finds itself in today.
This was patently evident in the nuts and bolts that should have converted the initiative into a throbbing dynamo – there was none or very little money and the planned Agricultural Modernisation Fund had been overtaken by the broader Regional Development Fund which will now have a window for agricultural finance. This is the state of the financial preparations for the initiative more than four and a half years after its launch. The region could not be really serious about slashing its import bill if this was the importance it attached to showing the money. Without money, the initiative will go nowhere as is evidenced by the tepid response by donors at a pledging conference and projects forum that were convened under the initiative.
While many of the 10 constraints to the initiative originally identified remain, in their communiqué the Heads were not inspirational. They merely committed themselves to the provision of the necessary financial and other resources to ensure internationally competitive, market-led production, and the identification and effective employment of the appropriate policies and strategies which will bring about the desired improvements, including in the agri-business sector. They called on development partners to assist in the efforts.
Given the crisis in confidence in this initiative there needed to be much more than these platitudes. There needed to be an absolute commitment in terms of the amount of money that would be immediately available from the RDF and a short-term, market-led plan for its expenditure. For example what are the three most imported food items that could be easily grown in the land mass countries of Guyana, Suriname and Belize? And how would the region immediately invest in these countries and others to ratchet up production of these items. That is the level of specificity, directness and urgency that the Jagdeo Initiative needs to survive. There is surely no need for another committee of Heads but there was no reason why President Jagdeo and Secretary General Carrington couldn’t have been deputed to oversee the immediate start of work. Unfortunately, if the conference had taken determined steps on the issue of a new governance mechanism this task could have been entrusted to it. It is left to be seen now what this feeble response to the initiative will produce.
And what is one to make of the Trinidadian decision to set up mega farms outside of the formal framework for the initiative and even though Guyana had offered to make land available here to Port-of-Spain for this purpose? It would seem that Trinidad has decided it needed to take care of its own food security needs and was moving ahead severally from its colleagues. The supreme irony was that Trinidad was able to mobilize a farmer from Guyana to plant one of their farms – most assuredly a sign that the conditions, incentives and returns in the twin-island republic were better than those here. That brings us back to Georgetown.
Being the home of the President behind the initiative, questions can legitimately be raised about the government’s own performance in boosting agricultural output, creating jobs, cutting the food import bill and expanding export earnings. Disaggregated and scatter-shot data won’t do. For the government to successfully make the case here that it has taken to heart the regional mission of its President it needs to show real results embedded within a plan. Are those results there?
Sugar and rice aside, can the government present verified and verifiable information on the impact its grow more food campaign has had on the economy and the lives of its people? Can it produce figures to show annual other-crops output from 2004 to 2009? Can it do the same for fish farms, livestock and poultry? Can it show how many new jobs have been created even though there is no sign of massive farming activity? Can it crystallize the growth in export earnings from these sectors? Can it explicate how the other-crops sector has been reoriented to take advantage of high value products? Can it link the grow more food drive with any modulations in the food import bill? Can it locate these changes within a blueprint for agriculture over the next decade or so that interweaves the now almost yearly risk of flooding, cultivation in the intermediate savannahs, bio-energy crops and the infrastructural links to Brazil?
It was heartening to hear last week that Neal and Massy and the local private sector may be working together in a drive to give real meaning to this initiative. It could be an important development in the local and regional agricultural sector and will test whether the government is prepared to give real meaning to the Jagdeo Initiative.
