Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud said unless any new regional agriculture strategy addresses how to overcome the binding constrains as postulated by the Jagdeo Initiative, it will be another futile effort and a waste of time, no matter how good or well written the proposals are.
The Minister was speaking at the opening yesterday of a workshop for the Validation of the Regional Policy for Food and Nutrition Security in the Caribbean, under the theme ‘Food security is the foundation of the region’s stability, security and continued prosperity.’
“This workshop takes place at an important moment in history. With last week’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit at the United Nations in New York evaluating the progress made mid-way to reach the targets set in 2005, we find ourselves in a world where close to one billion men, women and children remain undernourished. This is unacceptable,” the Minister declared.
He said while Guyana has already achieved its MDG Target 1, “that is to halve the number of people living in absolute poverty and have enough food for all our people, we cannot afford to be complacent.” He said the Government of Guyana’s goal is one where “every man, every woman and every child will continue to have access to healthy food.” He said without food security, “we deprive our citizens the fundamental right to live fulfilling lives…”
The Minister said over the last three years, the region has been confronted with numerous and manifold challenges “that have affected our ability to provide our people with physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”
The Minister said the recent increase in wheat and corn prices, “images from the 2008 Food Price Crisis, which saw the prices of key agricultural commodities skyrocket in the span of a few months, have become vivid again.” He said the global economic downturn has reminded people of how exposed the region is to the global environment. He said natural calamities, brought on by climate change, “have further compounded our region’s ability to attain food security, as well as the continued difficulties brought on by pests and diseases.”
The Minister made the point that Guyana has been investing heavily in the agriculture sector. He said with the exception of Guyana and a handful of countries in CARICOM, “I am yet to see decisive action and coordination at the political level.”
The Minister challenged participants not to let the workshop become another talk shop “producing endless amounts of papers that end up on dusty shelves…”
He said, “I want to see the workshop focus on the objective of agreeing to key policy actions and programmes to move the region tangibly towards improved and sustainable food security within the next five years, and take these to the relevant organs within CARICOM for approval and subsequent implementation.”
He noted that the first area of concern in his view is the region’s continued reliance on food imports, which, instead of reducing, has actually been increasing. “We tiny Caribbean nations, as recently as twenty years ago, accounted for more than two percent of the world’s agricultural trade. Our share has declined to less than 0.3 percent today. Our net agricultural trade was in surplus then, standing at around 3 billion US dollars. Today we are in deficit, paying over USD 3.5 billion US dollars annually to import our food.”
He said the shifting trade patterns have not only impacted the region economically, but have also exacerbated economic inequalities and fed poverty, thus contributing towards the region’s security challenges. “This strategy must thus work towards removing the barriers that our region now faces in international trade and take into account socio-economic impacts,” he said.
Persaud said too that the second area of concern is “our people’s unhealthy and costly tastes, which not only means that we have to spend our exchange earnings to pay for the import of highly processed and unhealthy products, but we also have to deal with the resulting health-related problems, which affect our region’s productivity and human capital.”
He said the strategy therefore has to incorporate nutritional aspects and place emphasis on the region consuming what it produces.
“The third area of concern is climate change and our overall agricultural risk management strategies shielding us from the vagaries of adverse weather, pests and diseases, and the myriad of other factors that are outside the control of the farmer, but can in one instant wipe out a whole season’s worth of labour and inputs and compromise local, national and regional food security. The strategy therefore must be one that will help deliver food security not just in three or five years’ time, but also set the foundation for long-term sustainable agricultural development models. For we cannot afford to invest in a strategy that will be outdated in a few years,” the Minister said.
The fourth area of concern is our institutional and business model. “We must link more closely with the private sector and consider the whole value chain, while integrating our approaches to land, water management, trade, transport and distribution, employment creating and improving our business environments,” the Minister said.