To­day is the sec­ond and fi­nal day of a meet­ing of one of the tech­ni­cal man­age­ment ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tees (TMAC) set up by Cari­com to look at co-or­di­na­tion of agri­cul­tur­al re­search and de­vel­op­ment in the re­gion.This TMAC was set up to de­fine ways to ad­dress one of the ten key bind­ing con­straints, as iden­ti­fied in the Jagdeo Ini­tia­tive, name­ly "In­ad­e­quate Re­search and De­vel­op­ment." It is led by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, St Lu­cia and con­vened by the Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (Car­di).

Hu­bert Em­manuel, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary at St Lu­cia's Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, is chair­ing the ses­sions at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.The Jagdeo Ini­tia­tive is a strat­e­gy for re­mov­ing con­straints to the de­vel­op­ment of agri­cul­ture in the Caribbean. It builds up­on past re­gion­al ef­forts to de­vel­op a com­mon agri­cul­tur­al pol­i­cy (CAP) and iden­ti­fies ten key bind­ing con­straints faced by the sec­tor, with re­sult­ing nec­es­sary ac­tions.

The an­tic­i­pat­ed out­come of this meet­ing is agree­ment on the way for­ward for a re­gion­al strat­e­gy for re­search and de­vel­op­ment; a strat­e­gy for link­ages with Latin Amer­i­ca; and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of es­sen­tials to ad­dress cli­mate change.

Of­fi­cials at this meet­ing in­clude rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Cari­com, the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guyana, the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO) and the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co-op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA).