-gov’t, CARICOM to seek major investments to boost food production

GUYANA’S Agri-Investment forum and ‘expo’ is set to return this year as the government and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) forges ahead with its food security agenda to reduce the region’s food import bill by 25 per cent by 2025.

Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha during a recent interview with the Guyana Chronicle disclosed that October has been set as a tentative date for the event.

“We are looking to hold it tentatively in October. I am hoping this year that we will do it in agriculture month and we will make it bigger, better and have more international companies plus regional,” Mustapha said.

According to him, this year’s forum will see officials engaging investors and key stakeholders within the agriculture sector to secure funding a new project proposal entitled “Building Food Security through Innovation, Resilience, Sustainability and Empowerment, curated by Guyana’s President Dr. Irfaan Ali, who holds the responsibility for Agriculture and Agriculture Development in CARICOM.

The project which includes the expansion of hydroponics, the process of growing plants in sand, gravel, or liquid, with added nutrients but without soil, was presented to CARICOM’s heads of Government at the 44 Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government held back in February.

“Generally, we are looking at investments in the Caribbean and you know the President would have already made two presentations to CARICOM, one in the high valued crops in terms of shade house and hydroponics in terms of the leafy vegetables and vine crops,” Mustapha said adding:
“We are looking for funding and hopefully all the countries and all the territories can start that programme.”

According to a communique issued at the end of the February’s conference, the Heads of Government had requested that the CARICOM Secretariat accelerate its efforts in the mobilisation of resources towards the achievement of the 25 by 2025 initiative.

They also requested the CARICOM Private Sector OrganiSation Inc. (CPSO) to hasten the pace of implementation of its various agricultural investment projects.
Earlier this year the CARICOM Ministerial Task Force on Food Production and Food Security (MTF) had informed that CARICOM members have collectively achieved 57 per cent of its ‘Vision 25 by 2025’ target thus far.

This was after countries submitted reports detailing their production data for 2022 for targetted commodities, as CARICOM moves towards lowering the regional import bill by 25 per cent by the year 2025.

Products such as cocoa, dairy, meat, root crops, fruits, and poultry have already reached 96.13 per cent, 84.36 per cent, 72.28 per cent, 70.91 per cent, 70.77 per cent, and 70.19 per cent, respectively, for the targetted production volume set for the year 2025.

Countries such as Guyana, Belize, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Dominica, and Jamaica have made significant advances in the production of commodities such as ginger, turmeric, corn, soya bean, root crops, fruits, cocoa, poultry, meat, fish, table eggs, and dairy.

Several priority areas have been identified for 2023, among them agriculture insurance and financing, trade and E-agriculture, resource mobilisation, and trade support.

These, he explained, will help to advance the efforts of the MTF and CARICOM as together they work towards achieving ‘Vision 25 by 2025’.

25 by 25 is the regional pledge by CARICOM Heads to increase food security by reducing the regional food importation value by at least 25 per cent by 2025.

Research has shown that the region imports, approximately 80 per cent of the food that it consumes, which amounts to approximately US$4 billion.