Transportation for food security

May 20, 2008 Editorial

Two months ago, in our editorial, “Caricom and Food”, we observed that the actions and statements of leaders across the region, “exposed the hollowness of Caricom’s purported commitment to the “Jagdeo Initiative” which has been articulated as a strategy for fast tracking the regional drive for realising its agricultural potential – the Regional Transformation Programme (RTP) for Agriculture and its successor the Caribbean Community Agriculture Policy, and not so incidentally, delivering us into sustainable food self-sufficiency.

Ever since the strategy was broached in 2002, and fleshed out the following year, there have been innumerable meetings, seminars, conferences and other talk-shops involving Heads of Government, Core Group of Institutions, COTED, Forum Ministers of Agriculture, Agri-Business Private Sector, National Consultations etc. The meetings produced a mountain of documents but not a basket of vegetables.”
We have now been informed by the Caricom Secretariat that there are to be further meetings this week in Guyana by the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED), “to deal with agriculture as the Region focuses on achieving food security in light of the spiralling cost of living.”

This Twenty-Seventh Special COTED on Agriculture comes just two weeks before the Agriculture Investment Forum scheduled from June 6-7 in Georgetown, to deal once again with the Jagdeo Initiative.

It is said that Nero fiddled while Rome burnt but right here we can witness our leadership blowing hot air to add to global warming even while the region is struggling with a bigger crisis due to rising food prices.
President Jagdeo has done yeoman service to the region by single-mindedly sticking to his guns on the development of the agricultural potential not only of Guyana but also of the entire region.

The Jagdeo Initiative will remain as an enduring legacy of his occupancy of the Presidency of Guyana. He had repeatedly pointed out the strategic, economic and social importance of being self sufficient in food protection.

Before the present food-price spike he pointed out to the Caricom Ministers of Agriculture: “A renewed and competitive agriculture sector will not only earn money for this region, but provide that critical food security that we need.

This is unacceptable in a region as rich and endowed with resources as ours to produce the food that we eat, so you should see your work in that broader sense too, solving some of the region’s problems.”
His Minister of Agriculture responded to the call ever since his appointment to his position in 2006 and we have seen a spate of initiatives in the agricultural sector all intended to boost its production and productivity. Sadly the energy of the Guyanese standard bearers on agriculture has not been matched, either in or out of Guyana, by leaders who ought to know better.

Right here in Guyana, the leaders of our opposition parties ought to be exhorting their constituencies to get back to the land and position themselves to literally reap the benefits of a new world in which those who produce food will be able to earn more than a fair living for themselves and their families.

We cannot count on Caricom to live out the dream enunciated by the Jagdeo Initiative. It may be that they want the present situation where Guyanese in-transit passengers to their islands are humiliated by their immigration personnel to continue. Food production can make us independent on the “beneficence” of those petty Caesars.

But in the meantime we have provided a home for the Caricom headquarters and we ought to hold them to their promises.

Early on, in order to implement the Jagdeo Initiative, there were ten areas of responsibility allocated among the members of Caricom.

One of these was, “Inadequate Transportation Systems” and responsibility for dealing with this constraint was given to St. Kitts and Nevis in 2005.

We in Guyana know that we can become the “breadbasket” of the Caribbean but we know too that the bread would have to be delivered to the customers. It is hoped that at the umpteenth meeting being held this week by COTED, we will have a report from St Kitts and Nevis on what has been done to improve the transportation bottlenecks for our food production.

If there are no answers then at the meeting in June this constraint ought to be high on the agenda.

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