Jesse Ramdeo

While Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment are work­ing to­wards in­vest­ing and im­prov­ing the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try through their 25 by 2025 ini­tia­tive, the re­gion’s cur­rent state of food se­cu­ri­ty is said to be wors­en­ing.

The grim rev­e­la­tion was made dur­ing the vir­tu­al launch of the fifth round of the Caribbean Food Se­cu­ri­ty and Liveli­hood sur­vey yes­ter­day.

The sur­vey rounds were con­duct­ed in re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The re­port analysed da­ta col­lec­tion which took place from Ju­ly 19 to Au­gust 12, 2022 and com­pared find­ings with sur­vey rounds con­duct­ed in April 2020, June 2020, Feb­ru­ary 2021 and Feb­ru­ary 2022.

The on­go­ing con­flict be­tween Ukraine and Rus­sia was list­ed among the caus­es of the con­trac­tions.

“Sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions due to the on­set of con­flict in Ukraine have de­cel­er­at­ed that pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment,” it said.

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,” the sur­vey said.

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.

“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,” Chong said.

The UN’s Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s sub-re­gion­al of­fi­cer Dr Re­na­ta Clarke mean­while said swift mea­sures are 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, it’s not enough that we pro­duce more food, we have to pro­duce more smart­ly,” Clarke said.

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.