Dear Editor,
Given our endowment of extensive and rich agricultural lands, it is a matter of commonsense to make the expansion of the agricultural sector one of the main planks of our development strategy, to ensure that the people have an adequate, regular and varied supply of food. Some years ago, a US Secretary for Agriculture, Earl Butz, said; “Food is a weapon. It is the principal tool in our negotiation kit”. And obviously he was right. Food has been used as a weapon in the ruthless power-play which characterises the “game of nations”.
Notwithstanding the extensive news coverage given every day to the so-called World Energy Crisis, the most important crisis facing the world is that of the adequacy of food supply. There was a looming problem as early as 1970.Two years later the Secretary General of the FAO uttered grim warning of an impending food crisis, and by 1974 famine was rampant in many parts of the world. The FAO has again warned of a food crisis which will afflict the world.
Caricom countries import EC$ billions of food from outside the region every year. We are members of Caricom, we therefore have a duty to use our agricultural potential to strengthen the food security situation in the region as a means of promoting stability in the region and reducing its vulnerability to external pressures. To this duty, we should add self-interest, since our own safety is bound up with the safety and survival of the region. For us food must not be a weapon, but defensive armour for ourselves and the region.
But in a wider context, as members of the world community, we also have a duty to use our agricultural potential to help alleviate the suffering which is endemic in a shortage of food in the world.
Over the years, the government has made massive investments in the agricultural sector. The millions of dollars spent on sea defences, river defences, pumps, drainage and irrigation systems, roads, and training facilities have been invested to create favourable conditions for large and efficient agricultural production. We must now ensure that we get real benefits from our investment. And we must ensure that the administrative, managerial, financial and other supportive arrangements are established or improved to stimulate massive increases of agricultural production.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
(former extension
officer RPA)
