Part 6: Planting Today to Better Harvest Tomorrow!

TODAY’S Agricultural Investment Forum and Exposition is not just a Guyana affair, as it has also attracted participation by Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders from Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, The Bahamas, Belize, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago, as well as the Premier of Montserrat.

The event will display and feature aerial survey equipment, fertiliser technology and land management tools, and involve financial institutions, international agricultural projects, logistics companies and agro-processors.

CARICOM’s Assistant Secretary General, Joseph Cox, sees today’s event as “a stepping stone for the region to capitalise on major investments and opportunities to elevate its value chain,” as well as “a prayer of hope” and “an opportunity for effective partnership between the state, governments and private sectors.”

“We are too blessed to be stressed and too rich to be poor,” he said, insisting “It’s full time that we capitalise on the opportunities…

“We have opportunities… to move up the value chain,” Cox said Monday, hinting the event can also possibly be an annual regional activity to support and enable the Caribbean’s agricultural sector to “retool and reshape where appropriate,” so it can “continue to be a part of the regional agenda”.

Held under the theme “Investing in Vision 25 by 2025’, the double-barreled event will also attract at least 12 donor agencies, 550 delegates and 100 exhibitors and is anticipated to be the largest-ever gathering of regional Heads of Government with investors, donors and agriculture stakeholders.

Guyana is leading CARICOM’s efforts to reduce its US $6 Billion food-importation bill over the next three years by 25 per cent and coming ahead of observance of World Food Security Day on June 7, the event is also expected to encourage potential investors to contribute to food and nutrition security and identify specific areas where investment is needed to overcome existing structural and operational challenges.

The prospects look good.

Guyana is currently experiencing an unprecedentedly high level of foreign investment, the Bank of Guyana recently reporting a capital account surplus of US $1.7 Billion in 2021, reflecting the net flow of Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) worth US $4.4 Billion.

The Dr Irfaan Ali administration is also offering tax concessions for priority private investment projects — and actually approved 48 in 2021 that can create over 2,300 jobs.

Interestingly, 17 of the approved private investments are in Services and another 17 in Manufacturing, but only five in Agriculture, with four in Mining, three in Forestry, two in Tourism, two in ICT and only one in Energy.

The figures show that foreign and local investors have not been as interested in putting their money into Agriculture as in Oil and Gas, Services and Manufacturing, which tend to yield faster profitable Rates-of-Return.

21st Century agriculture has the capacity to make the industry more attractive to local and foreign investors, but they naturally tend to be both cautious and careful, resulting in regular food production not being a favorite investment choice.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for the stakeholders gathering from today is to show and convince local, regional and international investors that betting on agriculture can be more profitable and to break with tradition by getting bullish on a traditionally slow sector.

The perfect reasons exist, starting with the increasing need for food driven by increasing global poverty over the past decade and accelerated by recent developments, from Climate Change to COVID to the Ukraine War.

UNICEF, this week, reported over 40 million children under the age of five now suffer from malnutrition globally, while hundreds of thousands of displaced people have had access to basic foods curtailed by wars between neighbouring states in Africa and Asia, just as in Europe today.

While millions of children in poor and developing nations face dying from hunger, millions in the United States are briefly affected by shortages of baby milk formula as a result of the global wheat crisis.

And food is also being weaponized in the economic war against Russia, with one popular global hamburger chain employing over 62,000 Russians being forced to close down to implement politically-motivated sanctions against the government in Moscow.

Increasing food prices and decreasing availability of three-meals-a-day for many everywhere are also forcing people to make new and better eating choices, particularly in keeping with what they can afford.

Science and Technology, Digitisation and other modern Century 21 applications to, and variations of, modern agriculture do allow for production of more and better food at affordable prices, but it’s not in the instinctive habit of investors to settle for lower rates-of-return when they can seek or demand higher.

The quick and healthy returns always expected from FDIs in developing countries naturally allows investors to set prices at levels that will meet their promised and/or guaranteed expectations, but which are not always measured by the affordability of the public purse.

In this case, the challenge is to get or encourage local investors to see the need for and profitability of investing in the New Agriculture, not by totally dumping the old for the new, but by also encouraging traditional farmers to see the positive prospects in embracing change that works for them — and for consumers, which they also are.

By Sunday, the forum and expo will have ended and the reviews will take place alongside plans for quick-enough implementation of new agreements and/or arrangements arrived at.

But until and unless the new investments are shaped to reduce dependence on importing foods that can be grown in Guyana and the Caribbean and regional governments do more at home to lower food imports and increase local production of better foods at affordable prices, while also working equally-hard to change consumption patterns for the better, the next forum and expo will be about how to achieve the 25 per cent reduction in the regional food import bill in just two years.

Here’s to this first regional parley on food for thought for more and healthier Caribbean foods!