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Repositioning agriculture

The Caribbean Community and the global food frenzy

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries really ought not to have found themselves caught up in the current global food frenzy that has spawned gloomy predictions of widespread starvation unless the international community takes action now to increase food production significantly over the next decade or so.

Views that link the current global food alert to the diversification of key food crops to ethanol production and the more-mouths-to-feed argument that apply chiefly to the populous nations of China and India, can hardly be applied to CARICOM whose economies have their original foundation in agriculture and whom, over more than half a century of independence have squandered opportunities not only to ensure their own food security but, collectively, to become net exporters of food.

As it happens Guyana is the only CARICOM country that enjoys that distinction, the rest of the region having fashioned their economies – in several cases, wholly – to cater to the tourism industry, or else, specifically in the case of Trinidad and Tobago, to embark on an oil-driven path to industrial development that has placed food security on the back burner.

Last year’s US$3bn imported food bill attests to a counterproductive regional ‘addiction’ to foreign foods driven chiefly by the affluence of a growing Caribbean middle class and the requirements of a tourism sector that depends on foods imported from North America and Europe if it is to survive. The realization that at current food prices US$3bn could easily double over the next two years appears to have finally caused the region to wake up to the reality of profligate spending and to the need to dramatically reduce its food import bill by strengthening its own food production capacity.

The regional food challenge – the term challenge better suits the CARICOM circumstance at this time - and what is to be done to seek to create greater food security has spawned sober reflection on the persistent entreaties to the rest of CARICOM by successive governments in Guyana, first, to grow more food and, secondly, to focus on increasing the levels of intra-regional food consumption and food exports chiefly to the markets comprising the Caribbean diaspora in Europe and North America.

Failure to realize these goals has exposed the limitations of the much vaunted Common Agricul-tural Policy (CAP) which- as the current circumstances so clearly illustrate - has manifestly failed to realize the goal of regional food security.

President Bharrat Jagdeo, the regional “lead Head” on Agricul-ture who finds himself leading the CARICOM ‘charge’ for regional food security has been less than diplomatic in telling off the rest of the region for persistently ignoring the warnings from Guyana – which warnings long precedes his own administration - that food security had to be one of the bedrocks on which the development of the region had to be be built.

At the CARICOM food forum held in Georgetown earlier this month President Jagdeo repeated his admonition to a far more attentive regional audience that now looks to Guyana provide the impetus for a strengthened regional agricultural sector. What CARICOM now seeks is to realize the repositioning of agriculture – as Trinidad and Tobago’s Agriculture Minister Arnold Piggot put it at the Lilliendal forum – “not in the traditional narrow context in which is has been seen and valued only in terms of the farm output, but to view and value it in the broader terms of agri-business. “

The re-conceptualization of agriculture as a regional economic activity amounts to a historic U-turn from what Piggot terms the mere “farm output” to an industry that embraces the concept “that the sector includes agricultural production, agri-processing, food manufacturing, special and unique culinary cuisine, food service and agri-entertainment/agri-tourism.

In sum, what CARICOM seeks to do is to embrace the so-called Jagdeo Initiative as the driving force behind a novel and major cultural shift in the manner that it perceives agriculture to take account of changing global circumstances. It is a shift which, if it is to succeed, will require – perhaps above else – a sustained regional commitment to the declared direction, which is by no means assured over the medium to long term.

What the Liliendal forum sought to do, among other things, was to evaluate some of the other requirements and challenges for the desired “repositioning” of agriculture - requirements like investor inputs and investment regimes, the role of local and regional commercial banks and insurance companies, the upgrading of regional agricultural research and teaching institutions, the creation and upgrading of physical infrastructure for mega-plantations and joint venture possibilities involving existing agricultural ventures and local and overseas investors.

Guyana will, of course, be contemplating those opportunities that are likely to emerge from the regional repositioning of agricultural sector for its own economy. These include large land-lease arrangements for externally food production ventures, the creation of a viable agro-processing industry, the introduction of new technology and upgraded teaching and research institutions and the expansion of existing agricultural holdings through joint venture partnerships with external investors. What the Jagdeo administration will also be aware of is the increased influence that Guyana can ezert within CARICOM if it can emerge from the current food focus as a critical player in the quest for regional food security.

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3 Responses to “Repositioning agriculture”

Joe Coxall
on June 30th, 2008 8:10 pm

Guyana has been playing around with the Caribbean Food Basket idea for the past three generations, at the present pace, it would most likely take another three generations.

Guyana should now turn her attention towards oil drilling. Yes you heard me right. I said oil drilling. There is lots of oil in Guyana and everywhere else. Contrary to what the oil companies have been telling us, oil is not a fossil fuel,it is produced in the earths mantle and is replenishable.

The Russians during the cold war, were isolated from oil supplies and conducted their own research and found that very deep below the earths surface between 17,000 and 23,000 feet there are unlimited reserves of oil.

Today Russia produces more oil than Saudia Arabia. You will not hear about that in the Western Media. The Western “experts” told Vietnam that their country was barren with no natural resources. The Russians went over there and said not true. They drilled several oil fields and now Vietnam is an oil producing country.

Only Russia has this deep oil drilling technology, they developed it out of necessity during the cold war. It is very expensive technology, but Guyana can negotiate a profit sharing deal.

Now will America allow Guyana to drill for her own oil? That’s the big question, chances are they will not, but it’s worth discussing with the Russians.

Joe.

[Reply to this]
donna simon
on July 7th, 2008 8:16 pm

We should not buy into the scaremongering about the food crisis. To kick start the economy in the US that depended on the real estate and credit is the solution of the corporate businesses has come up with is a price we all have to pay and I hope learn from.

[Reply to this]
Dtech
on August 1st, 2008 6:45 pm

I think the ‘Jagdeo Initiative’ is some what of a step in the right direction, “Ideally”
But when private investor Claiming that they have Permision from the GOG to destroy “Significantly Developed” Farms and farm lands to build Housing Schemes.
How can the GOG tell CARICOM ‘Repositioning Agriculture’?

Check wat im talking about>>>>>

http://www.stabroeknews.com/news/sara-johanna-farmers-developer-at-odds-over-land/

[Reply to this]