Ke­jan Haynes

The US gov­ern­ment has pledged $28 mil­lion in as­sis­tance to ad­dress ur­gent food se­cu­ri­ty needs in the Caribbean. It’s one of many promis­es made by US Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris as she met with Cari­com lead­ers, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, in Wash­ing­ton DC yes­ter­day.

“We know that dis­rup­tions from Rus­sia’s ag­gres­sion and from the pan­dem­ic and, of course, from the cli­mate cri­sis, have put pres­sure on glob­al food prices, and have led to food short­ages. Ad­dress­ing food se­cu­ri­ty in the Caribbean and around the world is a pri­or­i­ty for our ad­min­is­tra­tion,” Har­ris said.

The White House said US­AID, which set up an of­fice in Port-of-Spain last week, will de­ploy five ad­vi­sors to the Caribbean re­gion.

Ac­cord­ing to the White House Web­site Fact Sheet, con­sul­tants will be mo­bilised in the fol­low­ing ar­eas: ef­fi­cient use of fer­til­iz­er; biofer­til­iz­er pro­duc­tion; nu­tri­ent man­age­ment; crop in­sur­ance fea­si­bil­i­ty; and to de­vel­op an op­er­a­tional lo­gis­tics and sup­ply chain mod­el to stream­line in­trare­gion­al trade.

“In par­tic­u­lar, we will pro­mote good agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices and do what we can to en­hance those prac­tices in the Caribbean,” Har­ris added.

“We will con­tribute to ad­dress­ing the lo­gis­ti­cal bar­ri­ers to trans­porta­tion.”

The meet­ing is a fol­low-up to a Pre-Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as meet­ing in April and ce­ments pro­pos­als made at the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in June in Cal­i­for­nia. At the sum­mit, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and VP Har­ries pro­posed three joint com­mit­tees to fo­cus on the is­sues of en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, fi­nance and food se­cu­ri­ty.

Each com­mit­tee has been co-chaired by a leader from the Caribbean and a se­nior mem­ber of the US ad­min­is­tra­tion

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley is the co-chair of the en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty com­mit­tee. Suri­name Pres­i­dent Chan­drikaper­sad San­tokhi and Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley co-chair the fi­nance com­mit­tee and Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali is co-chair of the food se­cu­ri­ty com­mit­tee.

In a state­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley said, “With re­spect to en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, the po­ten­tial of the hy­dro­car­bon re­sources in the re­gion was dis­cussed with a fo­cus on how these re­sources can be part of the so­lu­tion to the cur­rent glob­al dif­fi­cul­ties.”

On the top­ic of cli­mate change, Har­ris ac­knowl­edged the Caribbean is on the front­line on the cli­mate cri­sis. She said her gov­ern­ment will take steps to ac­cel­er­ate the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the US Caribbean part­ner­ship known as PACC 2030.

“The Unit­ed States, to that end, is com­mit­ted to four ar­eas, in par­tic­u­lar one to iden­ti­fy new clean en­er­gy projects, to pro­vide tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to our part­ners in the Caribbean, to bring in­vestors to the Caribbean, and to im­prove ac­cess to de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing, which was the sub­ject of much dis­cus­sion in our pre­vi­ous meet­ings,” Har­ris said.