RECORD food prices are likely to be sustained this year because of high crude oil costs and smaller crops, said the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO). “The potential risk is crude oil may continue to go higher, and if floods and droughts happen again, we’ll face further price increases,” Hiroyuki Konuma, the FAO’s regional representative in Asia, said in an interview yesterday. “Now we’re in a much better situation than the crisis in 2008.”

Global food costs advanced to an all-time high in February, according to an index compiled by the FAO.

The increase has contributed to riots across North Africa and the Middle East that toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia. Prices surged as bad weather ruined crops from Canada to Australia and Russia banned grain exports after its worst drought in a half-century.

“We will get an increase in production but not sufficient to ease the market,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior FAO economist. “High, volatile prices will continue in 2011 and even in 2012,” he said in a video briefing yesterday in Bangkok.

To its credit our government saw what was coming since 2007 when food prices began to climb steeply and rapidly and, as such, immediately went into overdrive to implement several measures to meet the impending challenge of ensuring food security.

One of those measures was the launching of the ‘Grow More Food’ campaign which has paid handsome dividends as food production has been steadily increasing since then.

Speaking at the launch of Phase Two of the Grow More Food campaign this week, Minister of Agriculture Mr. Robert Persaud said the government had launched the first Grow More Food campaign in the midst of the global food crisis during which some countries were unable to buy food, which led to social unrest.

He said government wanted to place focus on, and lend support to, maintaining the resilience that was established so that Guyana could eventually tap into the market that the Caribbean presents.

The minister said that since the first Grow More Food campaign, there has been “a rush” of investment in agriculture from companies in India, Brazil and North America. For this, he said, government has identified large tracts of land in the intermediate savannahs.

He said that since the commencement of the Grow More Food initiative, non-traditional exports went up by 34 percent.

The campaign will now be intensified to cater for greater challenges and support, not only for small farmers, but expanding medium and large-scale agro investments to benefit from opportunities resulting from the global food crisis.
And, speaking at the same event, President Bharrat Jagdeo touched on some very pertinent issues and made some important observations with respect to Guyana’s booming agriculture sector.
In this regard, he correctly exhorted farmers to be mindful of the challenges that climate change presents to agriculture, as he reassured of government’s focus on the importance of the sector to Guyana and the region, as crises present opportunities.

“We are one of the few countries in the region that have still kept a strong residual interest in agriculture,” the President said.

“Agriculture’s future in Guyana is secure, largely because of your interest,” he said.

“We will be there to support with policies and infrastructure. We will ensure that the policy environment and incentives are aligned to encourage production,” said President Jagdeo.

Actually, Guyana’s history could be described as one of agriculture and, up to this day, it is still the backbone of our economy with sugar and rice being major components, even though Guyana’s economy is more and more being diversified with the emergence of a range of new and exciting sectors such as ICT and in tourism, thanks to the uncompromising and aggressive push in this direction by the Jagdeo-led administration.

During the early 1960s, Guyana was regarded as the bread-basket of the Caribbean because of its huge success in agriculture but following the removal of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) government in 1964, the agriculture sector plummeted because of neglect and poor policies and programmes.

However, under another PPP led government we are certainly returning to being the ‘bread basket of the Caribbean’ as today we are the only net exporter of food in this hemisphere.
This is testimony to the sound agricultural policies and programmes and deep commitment to agricultural development by this government.