“The chal­lenge to re­turn to nor­mal­cy is enor­mous as the an­ti-vaxxers in­ten­si­fy their cam­paigns.”

That’s the sen­ti­ment shared by the Food and Agri­cul­tur­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Reuben Robert­son, as he ad­dressed at­ten­dees at the re­cent grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture, UWI St Au­gus­tine.

He re­mind­ed grad­uands that they were com­plet­ing a stage of their lives in an his­toric and un­prece­dent­ed time, when over five mil­lion per­sons have al­ready lost their lives to the pan­dem­ic, which has al­so stran­gled the glob­al econ­o­my.

“COVID-19 has slowed glob­al eco­nom­ic growth, cre­at­ed dis­lo­ca­tion in the glob­al econ­o­my, dis­rupt­ed sup­ply chains, re­sult­ing in the clo­sure of some busi­ness­es, in­creas­ing un­em­ploy­ment and hikes in food prices,” Robert­son not­ed som­bre­ly.

He cit­ed re­cent re­ports from the joint dis­cus­sion among the Di­rec­tor Gen­er­als of the World Bank, World Trade Or­ga­ni­za­tion, and World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion which in­di­cate that 40% of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion must be vac­ci­nat­ed by De­cem­ber 2021 and 60-70% by June/Ju­ly 2022 if the world econ­o­my is to re­turn to a state of nor­mal­cy.

Cur­rent­ly, the G-20 coun­tries have achieved 60% vac­ci­na­tion while dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly, the low in­come and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries are at 4%.

“This growth is pro­ject­ed in large part in the ad­vanced de­vel­oped coun­tries and will be dis­pro­por­tion­ate across de­vel­op­ing coun­tries de­pend­ing on the rate of vac­ci­na­tion,” the FAO Rep­re­sen­ta­tive warned, hint­ing that re­gion­al states will face even tougher times ahead.

“For us in the de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, our re­turn to nor­mal­cy and some el­e­ment of pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic growth is sig­nif­i­cant­ly chal­lenged with the cur­rent dis­pro­por­tion­ate dis­tri­b­u­tion of vac­cines among the de­vel­oped coun­tries vis-a-vis the de­vel­op­ing and low­er-in­come coun­tries.”

Robert­son not­ed that gov­ern­ments are find­ing it dif­fi­cult to meet the month­ly salary oblig­a­tions due to the dis­rup­tions and dis­lo­ca­tions caused by COVID-19. There­fore, the em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors are lim­it­ed.

He hint­ed that har­ness­ing the po­ten­tial of the re­gion­al agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor was one way back to nor­mal­cy: “The op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able for trans­form­ing our cur­rent food sys­tems are lim­it­less. The ap­pli­ca­tion of sci­ence, in­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy with smart lead­er­ship and part­ner­ships can make a dif­fer­ence in your lives, that of your fam­i­ly, so­ci­ety and coun­try. —FAO