The abil­i­ty of Caribbean peo­ple to feed them­selves in these times of food in­se­cu­ri­ty and high prices, re­sult­ing from wars in far-off coun­tries, and the re­gion’s re­liance on im­port­ed food, are mat­ters which are some­times con­sid­ered sec­ondary.

Promi­nent Bar­ba­di­an agri­cul­tur­al ex­pert, Dr Chel­ston Braith­waite, re­mind­ed of the po­ten­tial for the com­ing food cri­sis in the world and the re­gion’s heavy de­pen­dence on im­port­ed food.

“As we seek to build economies for the next 50 years of Cari­com, we need to place food se­cu­ri­ty as a pri­or­i­ty,” Dr Braith­waite told his au­di­ence at a re­cent func­tion in Bar­ba­dos.

In ex­am­in­ing the health prob­lems caused in part by not feed­ing our­selves suf­fi­cient­ly and ad­e­quate­ly on lo­cal­ly grown, qual­i­ty and fresh food, the agri­cul­tur­al ex­pert not­ed the link be­tween poor qual­i­ty di­ets filled with un­healthy foods and the health prob­lems in the re­gion.

“Poor nu­tri­tion and poor food choic­es are the ma­jor con­trib­u­tors to the high in­ci­dence of di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion, can­cers, and obe­si­ty in the Caribbean,” Dr Braith­waite stat­ed.

In pro­vid­ing dra­mat­ic ev­i­dence to sup­port his claim of the need for qual­i­ty food grown and pro­duced re­gion­al­ly, the agri­cul­tur­al ex­pert quot­ed a re­port from the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank.

“The cur­rent da­ta show that eight out of every ten deaths in Bar­ba­dos are due to non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases,” Dr Braith­waite said, ex­tend­ing the da­ta to note that “four out of every ten pre­ma­ture deaths in Bar­ba­dos are due to the NCDs.”

Most as­sured­ly, the food and eat­ing pat­terns across the re­gion have many com­mon­al­i­ties, so what ob­tains in Bar­ba­dos must sure­ly be true across the re­gion and with sim­i­lar con­se­quences.

At least two Cari­com meet­ings, one at prime min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el, have tak­en place in the re­gion with a fo­cus on the spread of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs) across the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean as it re­lates to con­sump­tion pat­terns, in­clud­ing im­port­ed foods pur­chased with for­eign cur­ren­cy at very high costs.

Some time ago, his­to­ri­an, Pro­fes­sor Hi­lary Beck­les, made a case at an in­ter­na­tion­al repa­ra­tions meet­ing to jus­ti­fy the re­gion seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for the over-salt­ed and over-sweet­ened foods im­port­ed to feed the en­slaved pop­u­la­tion and the in­den­tured labour­ers, and the dis­eases spread by mass con­sump­tion of such foods.

As jus­ti­fi­able as that con­tention was with­in the con­text that it was giv­en, 150-plus years have gone by and so the time is long gone for the re­gion­al com­mu­ni­ty to launch in­to the pos­i­tive and ac­knowl­edge that we have to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for some­thing as ba­sic as our con­sump­tion of food.

The ob­jec­tive of food pro­duc­tion with­in Cari­com is one of the foun­da­tion as­pi­ra­tions of the re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion move­ment. At present, as list­ed in a Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at doc­u­ment, be­tween 80-90 per cent of food con­sumed in the re­gion is im­port­ed. The cost of such con­sump­tion pat­terns in dol­lars and cents and al­so in “sense” must sure­ly be pro­hib­i­tive.

For too long, Cari­com ex­perts in a va­ri­ety of fields have con­clud­ed on mat­ters crit­i­cal to the ad­vance­ment of the economies and so­ci­eties of the re­gion with­out those ad­vances be­ing made. It is equal­ly well known that im­ple­men­ta­tion has and con­tin­ues to be the ma­jor re­tard­ing fac­tor of the in­te­gra­tion move­ment.

There is no time bet­ter than the present for in­dige­nous food pro­duc­tion to be giv­en full at­ten­tion.