At a time when virtually everything is a priority, it was pretty much understandable that Monday’s global observance of World Food Day should have passed with relatively little national mention.
At last week’s Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) activities in The Bahamas, attention was paid to “25 by 2025” sloganeering for the drive to reduce regional food imports by 25 per cent by the year 2025. How much attention was paid to all of this over here?
As a somewhat related aside, the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) was once routinely a part of such activities in a mutually beneficial drive to elevate the quality of regional media reportage on food and agriculture issues.
For years, journalists were encouraged to interact with regional experts in a wide variety of disciplines related to science, research, and public communication. There were awards for quality reporting, and the active participation of journalists on panels discussing key issues.
The ACM and its member journalists organisations are now rarely referenced, especially since it was realised that discussions on media coverage of food and agriculture issues do not necessarily equate to slavish participation in positive publicity for the various international and regional institutions involved.
Today, it remains an even greater challenge to elevate methodical, well-informed public advocacy on the subject of food and agriculture to a significant slot on our news agendas.
Back home, I confess not to have followed much of the parliamentary debate on the 2024 Budget Statement—in part due to the poor-quality contributions of the earliest presentations – so I cannot say with certainty that the Finance Minister’s passing mention on October 2 of an important agricultural statistic either remained unchallenged or clinically dissected.
This is what he said: “… the agriculture sector has been on the decline, recording a low level of less than 2.0 per cent of Gross Domestic Product over the last five years. In particular, reduced investment and farmer participation have plagued advancement in the sector.”
“Regrettably,” he added, “food imports per annum have been escalating, reaching over $5 billion in 2019-2021 with $7.3 billion in 2022.”
Now, if the latter revelation is not startling to everyone with a concern about national development, I am not sure what else can be, violent crime notwithstanding.
I am not sure whether this statistic had previously been disclosed, but it signals a hugely shocking state of affairs, especially when juxtaposed against the estimate that overall agriculture (which presumably includes production not directly associated with domestic food consumption) is below 2.0 per cent of GDP.
In passing, it is worth reminding people that associating the end of sugarcane cultivation with a decline in domestic food production is a conclusion more rooted in political rather than scientific commentary.
We should be careful about tabulating agricultural output in the same column as we would place food production. The current drive to boost quality cocoa production is another example – admirable, but not directly intended to meet food and nutrition security targets.
The other dynamic that has remained dormant in T&T is the realisation that a notion of “food security” does not, and perhaps cannot, mean an ability to produce 100 per cent of what we consume. Self-sufficiency in the supply of food and “food security” are not the same. It is a particular kind of nonsense to initiate campaigns rooted in such a confusion. No, your home garden is useful, but cannot supply all your meals.
There are also factors such as taste and culture (check the ingredients that go into the production of roti, doubles, and pelau, for example) obligations under international trade agreements regarding subsidies, cross-matching with other sectors such as tourism and even energy, and, most of all, the building of a Caribbean regional platform to address the subject.
The last point appears to be the one viable option currently on the table. Unless the issue of food security and/or self-sufficiency is addressed as a regional, and not as an unrealistic national aspiration—as has been the case forever —we will continue to be startled by passing comments in national budgets.
But, in order for any of this to make sense, the Caricom region needs to be identifiable as a single economic space, so that national gains can accumulate as regional achievements—not as statistical sleight of hand but as tangible outcomes evenly reaching the dining tables of Caricom nationals everywhere.
“Tax free” agriculture in T&T is an admirable objective, but the free flow of food between Caricom borders and greater recognition of a regional dynamic appears to be the only realistic long-term solution at this stage.