Setting aside what is widely believed to be a cultural shift in the region which, in recent years, has manifested itself in a declining interest in agriculture, the Caribbean faces other challenges in what would now appear to be a more than token effort to rekindle interest among the populations of the respective states in looking to the land.
The renewed interest in food production appears to have been triggered, first, by the region’s growing awareness of the warnings issued by international organizations, chiefly the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) regarding an imminent global food prices as well as the reality of a 2010 regional food import bill in excess of $3 billion, a cost which some of the region’s poorer economies simply cannot afford.
There are, however, challenges to the revival of the culture of eating what we grow in the region that have arisen out of circumstances over which we have little control.
At last month’s Climate Change and Science and Technology Workshops held in Dominica as part of the first anniversary of the region’s Tenth Caribbean Week of Agriculture, state officials and regional agricultural experts grappled with what the Caricom Secretariat says is the need for regional farmers and fishers, especially those in small island states to adapt to climate change even as they seek to increase food production to meet both domestic and wider global demand. It is an issue which has surfaced before, particularly during the protracted intra-regional discourses spearheaded by Guyana’s former president Bharrat Jagdeo on the need for countries in the region to embrace a coordinated approach to food security. The issue has arisen chiefly in the context of the vulnerability of the small island states of the region to natural disasters including hurricanes which, Grenada for example, in the recent past, has resulted in the devastation of crops upon which those countries depend for both domestic consumption and export earnings.
The increasing unpredictability of climate variability including extreme droughts, intense hurricanes and increased precipitation resulting in floods, coastal erosion, intrusion of salt water and loss of soil fertility continues to impact on agricultural production in the region in circumstances where there is both a lack of financing and an inadequacy of research-generated knowledge to cope with the problem.
The region is now compelled by these circumstances to address the issue of agricultural production in a manner that takes account of climate change considerations and other challenges have emerged as well. Not least of these is a heightened level of caution by private investors to sink money into what, in some parts of the region are considered to be risky agricultural projects as well as a greater measure of reluctance among regional commercial banks and insurance companies to take financial risks associated with agricultural projects.
Discourses on the way for forward for regional agriculture held in Georgetown last year embraced, among other things, the concentration of large joint-venture farming projects in countries like Guyana where the risks associated with climate change are considered, for the time being at least, to be lesser. The expanded discussions included commercial banks, local, regional and extra-regional investors and insurance companies, all in an effort to recruit critical stakeholders to responding to the challenge of shoring up the Caribbean’s agricultural production. Other issues including the health and nutritional considerations associated with agriculture were also considered during the discourses.
While institutions like the Georgetown-based Caribbean Community Secretariat and CARDI have been pursuing initiatives based on these discourses not a great deal has taken place at the collective regional level to significantly advance the process. In some Caribbean countries including Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados there has been some evidence of heightened official interest in support private sector-driven agricultural projects aimed at increasing food production for local consumption. Some of these initiatives have focused on providing modest state support for small agricultural projects and strengthening capacity within the respective Ministries of Agriculture in the region. In Guyana, there has been evidence on initiatives designed to mitigate the effects of flooding and irrigation-related difficulties while institutions like the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) have focused attention in research related to maximizing food production and the introduction of new crops.
Progress, however, has been slow in other areas. There is little evidence, for example, of a shift in the disposition of the regional private sector to large scale investment in agriculture while, in the continued absence of reliable crop insurance mechanisms commercial banks and insurance companies continue to exercise caution in their disposition to the sector.
In Dominica last month, Director of the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Cooperation on Agriculture and Rural Development (CTA) Michael Hailu noted that it was rare for scientists, policy makers and farmers to sit together to debate issues relating to agriculture though he noted that such discourses have now become increasingly necessary in the light of the challenges confronting the sector.
Last year the region suffered some of the worst floods in its history and for some of the more vulnerable states in the region the situation has long reached a crisis point and they can no longer afford to delay action to mitigate the effects of climate change on their agricultural sectors. The Grenada experience apart, this year, Dominica suffered floods that affected a quarter of the island’s residents and the vast majority of its agricultural sector. At the regional level the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has indicated that Caribbean countries lose approximately 2 per cent of their GDP annually from the effects of hurricanes.
As far as mitigating the effects of climate change on agriculture in the region is concerned, experts have long pointed to the lack of adequate knowledge among farmers of the impact of climate change on agriculture and limited insights into mitigation and adaptation strategies that are appropriate to the region. While such issues have become part of the curricula at specialized regional institutions of higher learning including the University of the West Indies, the University of Guyana and the Guyana School of Agriculture, many of the region’s tradition farmers steeped in the cycle of planting and reaping have been caught unawares by the new challenge. Linkages, however, between climate change and their livelihood have compelled them to take the phenomenon more seriously. Increasingly, famers in the region have begun to evince an interest in technological practices that can assist in mitigating the impact of climate change. Initiatives like protected agriculture – which has had positive economic, environmental and social benefits outside the region – have attracted the attention of an increasing number of Caribbean farmers and potential investors. What makes protected agriculture significant is its focus on the efficient use of water and land, the utilization of marginal lands and the sheltering of crops from adverse conditions. In addition, research into the benefits of protected agriculture systems indicate that they produce a higher rate of yield resulting from more effective plant management.
Building awareness among stakeholders of climate change and its impact on agriculture has emerged as one of the key concerns associated with protecting Caribbean food security. This pursuit involves enhancing knowledge of the features of protected agriculture including information of the available technologies including structures, production systems and nutrient and pest management. It is a new challenge for Caribbean farmers and other stakeholders but one which they have little choice but to embrace.
