Almost certainly to the surprise of considerable numbers of Caribbean people, we are being told that the number of us facing “moderate to severe” levels of food insecurity now stands somewhere around 4.1 million.
A Caribbean Community (Caricom) survey has revealed that the number of people who find themselves in that condition in the English-speaking Caribbean has risen to 4.1 million or 57 per cent of the population. The findings were published in the latest report of the recent Fifth Round of the Caribbean Community Food Security and Livelihoods Survey. Caricom Assistant Secretary-General Joseph Cox was quoted as saying that this represents “a dramatic increase of 1.3 million since February 2022”.
The survey was conducted by Caricom in collaboration with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the European Union and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance. Administered in July and August this year, the survey reflects the situation of over 6,300 households across 22 countries and territories.
“The survey results… along with the realities highlighted simply cement the need for the region to reinvigorate its efforts and engage in new solutions to help the vulnerable groups and those living in poverty within the region. It emphasizes the necessity for further urgent collective action and support in addressing regional food and nutrition security. It highlights the need to increase the production of what we eat and facilitate intra regional trade,” Cox was quoted as saying.
Whereas the condition of food security describes circumstances in which people have “reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food,” the conditions of affordability and nutrition are frequently excluded from many food security probes. While it is, for example, widely asserted – often at official levels – that Guyana is a food-secure country, investigations that focus on some of the country’s interior communities have unearthed situations in which dietary regimes do not conform to the universal definition of food security.
Cox reportedly said that the results of the July/August 2022 survey revealed, for the first time in five surveys over two years, that the most serious concerns among respondents were the challenge of them being able to meet basic food needs (48%) and unemployment (36%).
More recently aggravated food security concerns have arisen on account of sharp global increases in food prices resulting from the Russia/Ukraine conflict which has seen major market supply disruptions of key production inputs such as fertilizers and fuel. These, according to the senior Caricom official, have had the effect of “deteriorating food and consumption diets” and destabilizing and impacting the access, availability and utilization of food.
