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.
The challenge of having to respond at a virtual crisis level to regional food security concerns need hardly have occurred but for the fact of development priorities in several CARICOM member states that placed emphasis on the services sectors and industrial production at the expense of agriculture and – particularly in the case of Trinidad and Tobago – on an oil-driven economy that felt – at least up until recently – that it could afford the cost of mostly extra-regional food imports. The fact that Guyana is the only member country of CARICOM that is a net exporter of food speaks volumes for the region’s lack of commitment to agriculture and accounts for the multi billion dollar food import bill which Caribbean countries can no longer afford.
Viewed in a global context this weekend’s forum is as important a forum as any that has ever been convened by CARICOM states to discuss agriculture. This is so if only because the forum seeks to realize immediate and positive outcomes to a crisis that is already manifesting itself in a lingering uneasiness in several Caribbean countries and more robust protests in other parts of the world. But that is not the only reason. The forum is also significant because it seeks to find novel approaches to promoting regional agriculture in the region and to fashion hitherto untried alliances.
It is not by accident, for example, that even before the start of the forum commercial banks have raised issues like crop insurance while other potential investors have raised issues relating to the preparedness of regional governments to set aside the customary bureaucratic sloth in the fashioning of new and creative investment regimes that will encourage regional and extra-regional investors to ‘buy into’ the initiative.
Earlier this week President Jagdeo announced ahead of the forum that the Government of Guyana was prepared to grant corporate tax concessions to facilitate investment in agricultural infrastructure while there is also talk about the establishment of a fund to respond to the commercial banking community’s concerns about crop insurance. These are examples of the kinds of initiatives which regional governments must presumably be prepared to take both to encourage investors and to fast track investments and if those legendary state bureaucracies for which we in Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean are well known are allowed to stand in the way, extra-regional investors will simply invest their monies in agricultural production in some other region that is serious about staving off the global food crisis.
President Jagdeo has also made this point – the most newsworthy outcome that we can anticipate from this forum is an understanding that the stakeholders – banks, insurance companies, farmers, regional and extra-regional investors and governments – have all committed themselves, in principle, to moving the process of regional agricultural investment forward. The weeks and months ahead will hopefully see that commitment in principle transformed into practical agreements that will kick-start the process of revitalizing the region’s agricultural sector in pursuit of the goal of regional food security.
The opportunities that inhere in the initiative go beyond the hoped-for realization of regional food security. Among those other opportunities that are most apparent are those that provide for the development of new agricultural ventures and the expansion of existing ones; the creation of increased employment opportunities in the sector; the availability of more capital for investment in agriculture; access to new technology; the revitalizing of regional agricultural research institutions some of which have been under-resourced for several years and the emergence of a new generation of agro-processing enterprises in the region.
While investors and investment institutions have committed themselves to participating in the initiative both banks and insurance companies have already raised some of the tough business-related questions some of which have to do with the risks that inhere in agricultural investment. In this regard; and while in the final analysis it is the private sector that will have to play a lead role in the process, the role of regional governments in framing concessionary regimes that encourage investors will be crucial.
What is important about this weekend’s forum is its “brass tacks” orientation. One expects that a framework of understanding that seeks to underscore its basic objectives has already been set out and will be put before the forum, allowing the substantive deliberations to focus on the real issues – that is, those issues that have to do with where the investment opportunities are and clearing whatever obstacles may exist to accessing those opportunities.
