A dish served cold

The agricultural sector in the Caribbean, under severe stress and pressure over the last decade, could get new life breathed into it by a United Nations project aimed at promoting food security among 15 participating nations, including Trinidad and Tobago. Poverty, unemployment and food supply data for CARICOM already indicate that  significant pockets of the population in some countries may not have access to sufficient food. The three-year project which has received US$5 million in financial support from the Italian government is being spear-headed by Dr. Patrick Gomes, who has taken temporary leave of his job as Executive Director of CARDI to oversee the project from the Port of Spain UN Food and Agriculture  Oganisation (FAO) offices.

According to Dr Gomes, the general challenge for Caribbean agriculture is clear: If the decline in the traditional export product is to be stopped and if opportunities to market non-traditional products are to be seized, there must be productivity growth. “ The main focus is looking at how we can demonstrate the productivity of farmers by better use of water. In other words, irrigated systems very much tend to be manually done...so we want to be able to introduce management of the water for improving productivity,” Dr Gomes said of the core aspect of the project. Over the last decade, there has been a decline in agriculture particularly in banana and sugar exports. Non-traditional commodity production and exports have neither been impressive with decreases in three main non-traditional exports; mangoes, plantains and root crop. In tandem with the decrease in regional production and export is the phenomenal increase in agricultural imports into the Caribbean, estimated at US$2 billion annually - putting food further away from the reaches of the poor because of naturally higher prices. Dr Gomes said while there may be an availability of food in urban areas, the poor are still unable to purchase it. “Poverty, therefore, is a great indicator of measure of food insecurity and vulnerability and it is very disturbing. The figures therefore are not comfortable at all in terms of how we are going to be focusing people to have an affordable balanced diet on a daily basis,” he said.

Dr Gomes said the ultimate beneficiaries of the UN project would be residents of poor and food insecure rural communities, mainly poor farm households, through increased and more efficient use of water. The adoption of the improved systems are expected to increase productivity and efficiency in water use so as to enable better year-round returns from intensive vegetable and fruit production for both domestic and export markets. “Farmers will be able to intensify production, produce off-season food crops and ensure a more regular supply on the market, thereby deriving increased incomes,” he said. Dr Gomes and his team have made a number of visits and have spoken to farmers in several of the participating countries comprising CARICOM member states and the Dominican Republic about the on-farm demonstrations. According to the project, a core group of some 100-120 farmers and their households in each of the member states will be targeted for exchanges and sharing of experiences in order to identify “best practices” for wider diffusion across rural areas and other farming entrepreneurs. The common body of knowledge acquired by the farmers and other stakeholders will also be used in the formulation of policies for both national and regional in regard to food security and food safety. The participating nations are being clustered into groups; the Organisation  of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) in one group; Belize, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Guyana and Suriname in another and the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago in a third group.

Dr Gomes described the response from farmers to the UN project “as extremely encouraging.”“Farmers want to know that they can improve their technique, they are very bright, they’re listening to the television, they even have access to the E-mail and the Internet, to study and learn about things. “They’re very encouraged also by seeing the importance of organising themselves to deal not only with their production and marketing. We want them to be so organised too that their household benefits. So we want the farmers and their families to be participating in the discussions. We intend really to bring together farmers from across the region to meet and have discussions but we also want farmers and their children to get involved in the whole process,” he said. During a project implementation and planning meeting held in Trinidad last December, a number of speakers supported the objective of the project to improve the food security situation throughout the Caribbean. “We must wake up to the realization that traditional exports are threatened and the pressure is strong on CARICOM countries to diversify their agricultural economies,” said Robert Ramjohn, Acting Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture in Trinidad, on behalf of Agriculture Minister Jarrette Narine.

Noting that in the past decade, considerable changes have taken place in the agricultural sector, Ramjohn said the old world of preferential trade and domestic protectionism for the sector is gone. “Our farmers are now vulnerable to competition from higher efficiency producers from outside the region,” he said. Sam Lawrence, Adviser of the Regional Transformation Programme for Agriculture at the CARICOM Secretariat said the region has the potential to be affected by acute food insecurity. “While there is not widespread unavailability of food, the trend has been established and there is increasing evidence that there are threats of food insecurity in the region. The risk factor is great,” he said. He identified the risk factors as the internationalisation process and its impact on the region’s productive capacity; the inadequacies in food production system and the difficulties with which the region is treating with the adjustment requirements and the lack of capacity in accomplishing the task of re-structuring economic processes and creating wealth in the  region. “Wealth creation and poverty reduction are synonymous to tough priority setting relating to our limited resources with the limited data, within the time constraint with which we are faced. We are trapped in a non-progressive action syndrome,” he said. Dr Gomes said there is  need for more governments in the Caribbean to have established food policies that are linked to the health of their populations and economic potential.

He referred to the CARICOM Health and Development Commission chaired by former director of the Pan American Health Organisation, (PAHO), Sir George Alleyne which indicates a willingness by the region to put issues of food, health and nutrition on a prominent level. “We’ve had agriculture and food and rural development almost in the background and now we’re saying, ‘ that cannot take place’ so countries are at different stages but it is very important and timely,” said Dr. Gomes. With the focus on expanding the Caribbean’s food basket, the UN project also has strong links with CARDI, the OECS, UWI, the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute (CFNI), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture among others for their support in transforming the objectives into tangibles.