In or­der to move the agri­cul­ture sec­tor for­ward, a more tar­get­ed ap­proach to busi­ness de­vel­op­ment in the sec­tor is re­quired.

That’s the view of the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO) trade de­vel­op­ment con­sul­tant, Jai Ram­per­sad.

In an in­ter­view with Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day, Ram­per­sad said spe­cial fo­cus must be placed on the ex­ist­ing do­mes­tic mar­ket to re­duce the food im­port bill.

There­fore, he not­ed that ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial al­lot­ment should be pro­vid­ed to sup­port stake­hold­ers in mod­ern ‘cli­mate smart’ agri­cul­ture sys­tems for high-val­ued niche com­modi­ties; agri­cul­ture tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove pro­duc­tion sys­tems, post-har­vest fa­cil­i­ties, and man­u­fac­tur­ing; fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port to farm­ers to en­hance and ex­pand the cur­rent pro­duc­tion sys­tems.

With the bud­get set for next Mon­day, Ram­per­sad said there is al­ways a con­stant call for more fi­nanc­ing for the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, but more needs to be giv­en.

“The agri­cul­ture sec­tor was al­lo­cat­ed the sec­ond low­est sub­ven­tion of $1.330 bil­lion in 2022, which was a mi­nor in­crease from the pre­vi­ous year. It should be not­ed that the agri­cul­ture sec­tor is al­so sup­port­ed by sev­er­al oth­er min­istries such as Trade that pro­vide as­sis­tance, both tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial, to stake­hold­ers in the in­dus­try for pro­duc­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing,” he out­lined.

As it re­lates to low­er­ing the re­gion­al food im­port bill of US$6 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, the trade con­sul­tant said while there is a good, gen­er­al struc­ture for im­prov­ing food se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion, a more tar­get­ed ap­proach is re­quired, fo­cus­ing on the needs of in­di­vid­ual coun­tries.

“The re­gion­al agri­cul­ture sec­tors and agri­cul­tur­al com­modi­ties are at dif­fer­ent stages of de­vel­op­ment, with coun­tries such as Ja­maica and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic mak­ing a heavy pres­ence in the glob­al mar­ket space while oth­ers are still un­der­de­vel­oped and face cli­mat­ic, tech­ni­cal, and fi­nan­cial chal­lenges that ham­per de­vel­op­ment.

“In­di­vid­ual plan­ning can fo­cus on the spe­cif­ic needs of coun­tries based on their pro­duc­tion sys­tems and do­mes­tic mar­ket de­mand. For ex­am­ple, an econ­o­my that is dri­ven by tourism may need ex­ot­ic fruits and veg­eta­bles such as berries, mel­ons (hon­ey­dew/can­taloupe), mush­rooms, and arte­sian let­tuce which can be pro­duced do­mes­ti­cal­ly giv­en the prop­er agri­cul­ture sys­tem and this would di­rect­ly re­duce the im­ports of these items and fill an ex­ist­ing de­mand in the mar­ket,” he re­vealed. It’s against this back­ground Ram­per­sad said trade mis­sions are im­por­tant.

He not­ed that the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions has sched­uled an im­por­tant trade mis­sion which be­gan Wednes­day with the pri­ma­ry fo­cus be­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket de­vel­op­ment for agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts (fresh and val­ue-added) in the Caribbean.

One of the crit­i­cal chal­lenges of the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try in the re­gion, Ram­per­sad high­light­ed, is that of mar­kets for com­modi­ties.

“While there are sev­er­al mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties both do­mes­ti­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly, the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets are specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed for agri­cul­tur­al items that have been struc­tured and de­vel­oped to dis­play a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage amongst glob­al com­peti­tors. Fresh com­modi­ties such as the dasheen in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines have tak­en up this chal­lenge and are now ben­e­fit­ing from in­creased de­mand in the Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom and French mar­kets,” he ex­plained. While TT has al­so pro­mot­ed trade mis­sions and mar­kets for agri­cul­ture com­modi­ties, Ram­per­sad said it was com­mu­ni­cat­ed that there is a need for mar­ket de­vel­op­ment through agen­cies such as the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­ture Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NAMDE­V­CO) and Ex­port TT.