‘Food and water are the new oil’

Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley

Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley on Friday urged CARICOM to act with urgency to bring the region to a state where it can sustainably feed itself, while noting that within the current climate “food and water are the new oil”.

Mottley made the statement while addressing the opening of the second instalment of the Agri-Investment Forum currently ongoing in Trinidad.

Mottley said that the world is faced with the confluence of three crises—notably the war on climate change, the COVID pandemic and steeply rising inflation owing to the war in Ukraine. Those factors, she noted, are pivotal to the access and affordability of food, which means that CARICOM should be acting with much greater urgency towards achieving food sustainability.