Agriculture Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy recently, and quite rightly,

lamented the high food-import bill of the Caribbean Region because there are abundant opportunities to pursue agriculture. But for various reasons, with the exception of Guyana and a few of its sister CARICOM countries, most of the countries in the Region do not have sound and visionary agricultural policies and programmes in place.
Consequently, there is a very high dependency on imported food.
According to Dr Ramsammy, outside of developed countries, such as those in Western Europe and North America, no sub-region in the world can compete with the Caribbean in terms of food and nutrition security.
However, he stated that this comes at a cost, part of which is the high food-importation bills that Caribbean countries have, noting that the vast majority of what is imported into the Region can be produced and supplied right here.
“Seven of our countries in CARICOM have a per capita food-importation bill of over US$500, on an annual basis, when the global average in developing countries is just US$66 per capita. It means that we are importing more than 10 times of the average citizen in developing countries. That must be a rejected reality, we must change that reality and we have the capacity to do so,” he stressed.
What is ironic though is the fact that many countries in the Region do not seek to import from within CARICOM even though many of the imported foods are produced here, and in most cases are of a superior quality.
According to Dr Ramsammy, a typical example is that Trinidadians are consuming tilapia imported from China and questioned whether all the demands of that country could not be supplied by countries within this Region instead.
Guyana currently has the capacity to supply a significant amount of the food needs of countries in the Region, but yet they choose to import from outside the Region.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, this country was considered the breadbasket of the Caribbean because of its very high agricultural output. Unfortunately, during that catastrophic period in our history (1968-1992), we moved from a breadbasket to a “basket case” because of the destruction of the agricultural sector under the then government.
Today, the vibrancy and productivity of the agricultural sector have been restored and as such we have become a net exporter of food and a food-secure nation. Thanks to the sound and visionary agricultural policies and programmes of the government, hard- working and resilient farmers and an abundance of arable land and water.
However, it will take more than increased and diversified agricultural production for the Region to achieve self-sufficiency in food. We also need to change the attitude of our people who are currently foreign-minded and seem to always prefer imported food items. This attitude probably stems from the feeling that using imported foods is a status symbol and also somehow it is superior to local foods.
If we do not change the mindset of our peoples, then no matter how much food we produce of the best quality we will never succeed in reducing that exorbitant food- import bill.
We also need to get our youths attracted to agriculture and develop a passion and appreciation for it.
The outdated colonial mentality hangover of agriculture being a menial job and reserved for uneducated people unfortunately is still with us and this needs to be addressed with some degree of urgency or the people of the Region may find difficulty in finding people to pursue   agricultural careers.