Even as the Caribbean’s successful completion of its Food Security Terminal remains a critical indicator of the progress being made towards the fending off of threats to regional food sufficiency, the World Bank’s latest global security update issued in February sharply underlines the critical importance of pressing ahead with the full and final completion of what has become a critical regional undertaking, the planned regional Food Security Terminal.
The February 27 report culled from the latest period – October 22 and January 2023 – for which food price inflation data are available, points to high inflation in almost all low- and middle-income countries, with inflation levels above 5% in 88.9% of low-income countries.
The warning could hardly be starker for the countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) which, late last year, were handed sobering warnings about their own stark food security vulnerabilities. The warnings, apart from triggering responses from the region that ranged from a commitment to a 25% cut in food imports by 2025 to a collective undertaking to create an emergency Regional Food Security Terminal left some of the more vulnerable territories wondering about their longer-term future.
What the World Bank’s most recent revelations on global food security have done, however, is to sharply underline the importance of the Caribbean’s Regional Food Security Terminal undertaking to the region, as a whole, and to require that the prime movers behind the project, Guyana and Barbados get ‘a move on’ in providing regular updates on progress towards the completion of what may now be the region’s most important collective undertaking in its history.
It is Guyana and Barbados, specifically, that have the responsibility of providing these updates. The physical facilities that will comprise the Terminal are located in Barbados while Guyana is charged with the responsibility of producing much of the food that will be stored there to help response to regional food security emergencies.
One statistic that is likely to be of particular concern to the region and of particular relevance to Guyana (in the context of the critical role which the country will have to play, going forward, in shoring up food security) is the fact that high rice prices, globally, has been primarily responsible for the wider significant global increase in the prices of cereals.
Contextually, the report indicates that the most recent Food Price Index monitoring and analysis Bulletin released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) revealed that international rice prices rose at an accelerated pace in January this year.
Rice supplies is likely to be one of the key expectations of Guyana in the context of the country’s wider contribution to the regional food terminal.
Guyana’s Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha has been talking up to prognosis for the rice industry this year, with a recent media report alluding to his 2023 budget presentation quoting him as saying that the local rice industry is set to flourish this year against the backdrop of official focus on boosting production and finding new markets.
Alluding to what he reportedly told the National Assembly was the role of the rice industry as “the bedrock of Guyana’s non-oil economy,” the Agriculture Minister asserted during the recent budget debate that government was keen to inject more financial resources into the rice industry in order that the country could be better positioned not just to feed itself but also maximize it earnings from sales on the global market.
Contextually, Mustapha is reported as saying that government is moving to invest in more land for rice cultivation, new farm-to-market access roads, new drying floors and research for new varieties of rice. Overall, the country is aiming at planting 170,000 hectares of land this year.
All of this is likely to be comforting news for the prime movers behind the planned Regional Food Security Terminal which, given the already pointed warnings about currently existing pockets of food security in the region, would welcome portents that point in the direction of some measure of likely alleviation of the reported food availability challenges.
Guyana’s rice sector reportedly recorded an 8.1% growth last year, with production reportedly rising to 610,595 tonnes.
The significance of rice to global food security can hardly be overestimated, not with the commodity being the staple food for in excess of three million people worldwide. Currently, upwards of 114 countries grow rice, most of them having annual yield of upwards of 100,000 tonnes.
Despite the recent upbeat pronouncements on the prospects for significantly increased rice production this year, visits to rice-growing areas in Regions Two and Six some weeks ago by the Stabroek Business found farmers expressing concerns over a likely rice production which, while unlikely to seriously impact local rice supplies, could impact negatively on supplies to overseas markets.
If the fullest implications of all of this are, as yet, unclear, it at least brings into the limelight the importance of both government and the private sector, collectively, doing their utmost to ensure that rice ‘delivers’ to the extent of its local, regional and international obligations.
