The agriculture conundrum

THE EDITORIAL in the Express of 5/4/17 has lamented the omission of agriculture as one of the industries (sectors) of focus in the Economic Advisory Development Board’s (EADB) diversification roadmap.

The editorial made the perennial, if facile, observation that “food imports cost the country close to US$1 billion a year and that there is great potential for reducing the deficit by producing and consuming local foods.” It further went on to claim that “the pursuit of food security is a mandatory goal for every sovereign state, however limited the results may be.” The chairman of the EADB took offence at the criticism in the editorial and stated that the EADB’s work programme incorporated several areas of agricultural production including cocoa, coconuts, spices and honey for exports and that the Vision 2030 plan dealt with food security.

The chairman also defined diversification for its purposes “as the development or expansion of any area of activity which can increase earnings of foreign exchange or save or conserve foreign exchange” (Express 12/4/17). It is assumed that the above activities could meaningfully increase or conserve foreign exchange.

It is my view that whether agriculture was specifically mentioned in the diversification road map or not makes little difference to the prospects for agricultural development in this country. There are too many deep-seated and near intractable problems of historical origin that plague the sector which will be elaborated upon later.

There is also an unwillingness to realistically assess the prospects.

Let us take for example the simplistic nature of the above stated view that the food import bill is almost US$1 billion and that there is great possibility to reduce this figure by “producing and consuming local foods.” First of all, the import figure comprises the value of many items which we do not produce here (or indeed cannot) or do not produce in significant quantities to meet consumption.

In an era of free trade, what is produced locally has to be competitive in terms of price and quality and cannot be shielded in any great measure by import controls and tariff barriers. Therefore, what we can realistically produce in substitution is limited and constitutes a moderate proportion of the import bill.

On the demand side, there is the universal taste of the locals for foreign goods which has been cultivated for decades. To restrict or reverse this propensity is easier said than done.

In this discussion about expanding local food production, there is some confusion about the goals of pursuing “food self-sufficiency” as a country as against “food security.” To pursue food self-sufficiency is illusory. As a small country we do not have the availability of resources — physical, human, scientific, financial and others — to target this goal.

Indeed, in an era of international specialisation in areas of food production, there are very few countries of the world which can boast of having achieved food self-sufficiency.

Food security, on the other hand, demands that we maximise the use of our local agricultural resources to be less reliant on imports as far as possible. In other words, we need to turn our comparative advantage into a competitive advantage both from the point of view of import substitution and export promotion.

It also means identifying and securing the sources of our imports and having the wherewithal through our exports to pay for them. A food security policy perspective therefore demands different considerations from a food self-sufficiency one.

Agriculture has suffered from a historical bias among the general population as well as in the deliberations of successive administrations.

Employment in agriculture was and is seen to be a demeaning occupation reserved for the lowest of the unskilled who have no other options. Wages and incomes in this sector were not only well below the national a v e r - age but w e r e a l s o v a r i - able.