While CARI­COM heads of gov­ern­ment are work­ing to­wards in­vest­ing and im­prov­ing the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try through its 25 by 2025 ini­tia­tive, the re­gion's cur­rent state of food se­cu­ri­ty is said to be wors­en­ing. 

The grim rev­e­la­tion was made on Wednes­day dur­ing the vir­tu­al launch of the fifth round of Caribbean Food Se­cu­ri­ty and Liveli­hood sur­vey. The sur­vey rounds were con­duct­ed in re­sponse to the COVID 19 pan­dem­ic. The re­port analysed da­ta col­lec­tion which took place from 19 Ju­ly to 12 Au­gust 2022, and com­pared find­ings with sur­vey rounds con­duct­ed in April 2020, June 2020, Feb­ru­ary 2021 and Feb­ru­ary 2022. 

Among the cause for the con­trac­tions was the Eu­ro­pean con­flict. 

" sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions due to the on­set of con­flict in Ukraine have de­cel­er­at­ed that pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment." 

The lat­est re­port al­so sug­gest­ed that climb­ing in­fla­tion,  in par­tic­u­lar, is hav­ing a neg­a­tive im­pact on the re­gion's so­cio-eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery im­pact­ing food con­sump­tion and di­ets. 

" Re­spon­dents in the Caribbean showed the worst food con­sump­tion pat­tern since April 2020. The fur­ther de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of food con­sump­tion pat­terns has led to greater food in­se­cu­ri­ty and will af­fect Caribbean peo­ple’s nu­tri­tion." 

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tion's World Food Pro­gramme Caribbean rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Amy Chong, stud­ies in­di­cat­ed that at least 4.1 mil­lion in the Eng­lish and Dutch speak­ing Caribbean were now ei­ther mod­er­ate­ly or se­vere­ly food in­se­cure. 

She stat­ed, 

"Al­though slight­ly less re­spon­dents are los­ing their jobs, more are hav­ing to re­sort to al­ter­na­tive and sec­ondary in­come sources to cov­er the in­crease in the cost of liv­ing. The in­abil­i­ty to cov­er foods and oth­er es­sen­tial needs has vast­ly pre­ced­ed the fear of ill­ness and un­em­ploy­ment as the main wor­ries when com­pared to re­sults six months ago." 

The UN's Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion's sub-re­gion­al of­fi­cer Dr Re­na­ta Clarke said swift mea­sures were need­ed to bridge gaps in both the food and en­er­gy mar­kets. Fail­ure to do so, she warned, could be dire. 

" We in the Caribbean have to re­claim our own nar­ra­tive about food sys­tems, its not enough that we pro­duce more food, we have to pro­duce more smart­ly. " 

The re­port al­so un­earthed that the food in­se­cure pop­u­la­tion in the re­gion has in­creased by 1.4 mil­lion, al­most dou­bling since the start of the pan­dem­ic.