With the past year particularly, having presented the Caribbean with irrefutable evidence that its food security credentials are nowhere close to where we might have imagined them to be, the “early 2023” breaking of the ground for the creation of a seven-acre facility intended to serve as a food logistics hub and trans-shipment area for agricultural produce from Guyana to meet the needs of the region in times of crisis, has to be kept in sharp focus. That has become an important barometer as to just how serious we are.
One makes this point conscious of the proclivity of the Caribbean for the pushing back of deadlines and for collective undertakings that fall flat on their faces, largely on account of institutional indifference to the importance of getting on with the job. After all, who can forget the protracted period of what turned out to be empty rhetoric on earlier plans for a Guyana-led food security initiative, a project – at which Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago were supposed to be at the forefront – which ultimately fell flat on its face.
Precedent provides manifest evidence of the need to apply a greater sense of urgency to a regional food security drive given the fact that 2022, in particular, has provided the region with open and shut evidence that it is not just our food security bona fides that are nowhere close to where we might have thought them to be, but also that there has been at least one probe in recent months that points unerringly at pretty serious pockets of food security challenges in parts of the region.
If President Irfaan Ali and Prime Minister Mia Mottley, can take a measure of credit for this year, echoing the earlier noises regarding the need to significantly shore up the Caribbean’s food security bona fides, (and, in fairness, going somewhat beyond that) the track record of the Caribbean in terms of sticking to its collective guns on issues still does not leave us bubbling over with confidence that the regional undertakings on food security of the past year or so will not fall flat on their faces. Here it should be pointed out that there is no evidence whatsoever up to this time, that what recently has been the tireless touting of the so-called 25 x 2025 extra-regional food import reduction target has been subjected to any kind of serious institutional think-in that has thrown up a clear and widely circulated road map for getting there. In the circumstances are we not, on the basis of precedent, altogether entitled to wonder whether 25 x 2025 is not some kind of ill-explained code or formula for just another gust of CARICOM hot air?
There is, this time around, a strong incentive for the region to push forward with its most recent incarnation of a food security plan. That incentive reposes in the fact that there is now, arguably, much more persuasive evidence than had been previously cited that we may well be, as a region, drifting in the direction of a real food security ‘bind’. Here, the case is particularly pointed in the instance of those Caribbean UN-designated Small Island Developing States (SIDS) whose capacity to arrive anywhere near to food security in the short to medium term stands imperiled not simply because they have, historically, not been blessed with anything even remotely resembling food security, but also because, in their present circumstance of particular vulnerability to the vagaries of climate change, their food security credentials have been even further eroded. Put differently, for regional small-island states, specifically, significantly enhanced food security credentials have now become a matter of survival.
Whether or not the recently mooted Food Security Hub envisaged as an option for responding to emergencies will, in circumstances of a worst case scenario, be sufficient to entirely bail us out, is unclear. The fact is, however, that it may well be the first significant building block of an eventual edifice which, perhaps, can be created if the countries of the region, individually and collectively, undertake incremental initiatives that will add value to what the food security hub has to offer.
To say that the institution of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has really done sorry little to push the region closer to a condition of food security is not to point fingers at the institution itself. What it seeks to do is to underscore the bind in which it finds itself, being as it is, a ‘creature’ of a clutch of member governments that have historically thrived on ceremonial chatter and too often, of a disposition to debate issues to death, usually without giving the slightest thought to the desirability of helpful outcomes.
To return to the envisaged regional food logistics hub, an undertaking which we dare not lose sight of in the present circumstances, we must ensure that what we get is what we are expecting, the actual commencement, early in 2023, of the ground-breaking launch of a “7-acre facility (in Barbados) which will serve as a food logistics hub and trans-shipment point for produce originating in Guyana.” At this juncture there can be few good reasons for the postponement or setting aside of this target.
Two points should be made here. First, there is the point about the track record of previous regional food security undertakings crashing and burning. Secondly, there is the reality that as things stand, the likelihood of the advent of a food security crisis that could seriously affect much of CARICOM is by no means beyond the realm of possibility. Here, what should drive us is an impetus deriving from the recent 25 x 2025 undertaking which, incidentally, ought to be attended by a monitoring mechanism which as far as we can tell is non-existent at this time.
Going forward, a great deal depends on carrying through with the convictions that appeared to underpin the unprecedented on-the-ground practical engagement on regional food security that ensued among (some) CARICOM Heads of Government earlier this year.
The early 2023 launch (or otherwise) of the regional food terminal ought to provide at least some sort of positive indication as to whether or not the region is really serious about its food security.
We will have to wait and see.
