AGRICULTURE Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy is convinced that CARIFORUM countries can significantly reduce their total annual food import bill, which stands at in excess of US$4 billion, by working together in producing more food domestically, and in removing the barriers to related intra-regional trade.He made the assertion last week following completion of a one-day Buyers Forum held by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) under a programme aimed at improving market linkages between buyers and producers in CARIFORUM countries.

This activity fell under one of the three components of the intra-ACP Agriculture Policy Programme (APP), funded by the European Union (EU) and implemented by IICA in partnership with the CARICOM Secretariat and the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI).

The EU-funded programme aims at promoting the development of small producers/entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector of CARIFORUM countries, thereby increasing the amounts of locally grown food on plates in the Caribbean, and enabling Caribbean farmers to be adequately paid for their work.

The programme was signed in March last, and will continue for four years.
The Buyer’s Forum, held at the Pegasus Hotel, saw selected top executives of the leading supermarkets, hotel chains, food-catering services, agro-processors, and food exporters from ten CARIFORUM countries, including Guyana, sharing their perspectives on how they can improve their businesses by collaborating and cooperating with farmers and agro-processors, while helping these smallholders.

The gathering included representatives from the 2013 number one hotelier in the entire Caribbean, the Atlantis Hotel; representatives of the Neal and Massey Group; and representatives of Grace Kennedy and of Consolidated Foods Limited (CFL), a supermarket chain which operates in Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, among other places.

Participants at the evening event which followed the end of the programme were welcomed by Mr. Wilmot Garnett, local representative of the IICA; and speakers included Mr. Robert Best, project coordinator for the Intra-ACP APP project; Mr. Robert Reid, IICA’s International Specialist in Agro-Business; and Ambassador Robert Kopecký, Head of Delegation of the European Union to Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and for the Dutch Overseas Countries and Territories.

In a feature address to the gathering, Dr. Ramsammy said he found it inexplicable and unacceptable to pick up a bottle of coconut water in Jamaica, in Barbados, or in Guyana and find that it came from Thailand.
He also found it inexplicable to find that the Region spends
US$200M on importing for the livestock industry feed that can be grown right here in the Caribbean.

He said that sanitary and phyto- sanitary requirements for agricultural products, often invoked by authorities when refusing to accept agricultural products into their countries, was a major barrier to intra-regional trade, but he was convinced that those problems can be overcome if CARIFORUM countries work together to resolve them.

He said: “This EU project can help resolve these issues. I hope that a year from now, when we report on what we have achieved, we can say that, because of this project, buyers are buying more from within the Region; that we can compete with some of the products that we find in our supermarkets coming from other parts of the world”.

Mr. Robert Best, project coordinator for the Intra-ACP-APP project, said the Buyer’s Forum was the first technical activity of the improved market linkages’ aspect. This component focuses on entrepreneurship development and local, national, regional and global market linkages for producers in CARIFORUM States.

Two other components which make up the three components of the four-year programme are the enabling policy environment for agriculture, being done by CARICOM Secretariat; and applied technology, research and innovation, being done by CARDI.

Mr. Robert Reid, IICA’s international specialist in agro- business, who is in charge of the market linkages programme, said the Buyers Forum has been determined to be an innovative way of linking enterprises to markets.
He said the Buyer’s Forum had proved to be successful in terms of the buyers indicating what they required from producers.

He said: “The response of these top executives of the leading supermarkets, hotel chains, food-catering services, agro-processors and food exporters from the ten CARIFORUM countries was very encouraging. They have agreed to be anchor firms that will play an integral part in whatever activities we in IICA have planned or are implementing in terms of linking them up with farmers and agro-processors within the Region.”
He said: “In the next six months, the IICA team, based on what buyers are saying, will have some professional short-term consultants going out to each of the 15 CARIFORUM countries to determine where to actually intervene; what products to target for which food chains; which producers to link up with which buyers.”
His component of the EU-funded Intra-ACP-APP project will also address the matter of financing mechanisms through which farmers and agro-processors could get prompt and early payments for their produce, since this was a weak link in the chain between the farmers, agro-processors and the hotels.”

He said: “The bottom line of the market linkages component is to ensure that, at the end of the day, farmers and agro processors earn more money; and that the impact is felt not only in Guyana, but in the rest of the Caribbean.”

Ambassador Robert Kopecký mentioned the high food import bill of CARIFORUM countries, and said the EU was assured that, if those countries can boost their production, they can reduce the bills and use the savings for infrastructure, and for health and education services. He said that because of this, he was happy to be present at the EU-funded Buyer’s Forum.

He cautioned that there is a new diplomacy prevailing nowadays, one not measured by political nuances but by the effectiveness of the appropriation of such funds.
Written By Clifford Stanley