TO ensure that the people of the Caribbean have an adequate, regular and varied supply of nutritious food should be one of the main aims of the Caribbean governments. That Caribbean country which depends for its food supply on external sources is in a vulnerable position. It is incapable of guaranteeing its citizens adequate or regular food supplies, and will find it difficult (if not impossible) to exercise an important option of social policy, i.e. regulating and maintaining food prices at a reasonable levels. Moreover, such Caribbean countries are susceptible to serious political pressures from inside and outside. A few years ago, a US Secretary for Agriculture and the FAO, said “food is a weapon. It is the principal tool in our negotiation kit.” And obviously they were right. Food has been used as a weapon in the ruthless power-play which characterises the” game of nations.”
Notwithstanding the extensive news coverage by NCN Close – Up talk with Martin Goolsarran and a team of experts that over one billion people go hungry every day in the world, the most important crisis facing the world is that of the adequacy of FOOD supply. The team drew our attention to this looming problem of the poor and hungry people in all countries all over the world. Years before the Secretary General of the FAO uttered grim warnings of an impending FOOD CRISIS and that famine will be rampant in many parts of the world. The FAO representative on that forum of NCN has again warned governments of hunger and FOOD Crisis which will afflict the world throughout this 21st centaury and beyond, in anticipation of this problem and as a vital part of development strategy by Caribbean governments, the Leaders should announced a policy objective of national self-sufficiency in food. In the resolute pursuance of this policy, Governments should do two things: first, it should banned or restricted the importation of a wide range of food items which they either did not need or could produce themselves; and secondly, it must give top priority to the development of the agricultural sector by the private and public sectors with all stakeholders involved and authorized a massive increase in investment in that sector. Only then we can reap the benefits and feed the hungry of that far-sighted policy initiative.
We in Guyana have been able to survive in a world rocked by successive economic crises and spiralling inflation and we have been able to achieve a notable measure of success in our development efforts-only because we produce so much of our own food and are able to use our foreign exchange earnings mainly for buying goods for development rather than for buying food. The fact of the matter is that most Caribbean countries do not have extensive and rich agricultural lands like Guyana. We should start to ban the importation of some food items; we still import some food items-largely because of acquired tastes. On the basis of nutritional values, there is absolutely no reason why we should still import these items.