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IICA elects Guyana as Rapporteur
Kaieteur News – The Executive Committee of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) comprising Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Suriname, and the United States of America has elected Guyana as Rapporteur for the current Committee. Guyana now bears the responsibility for the presentation of resolutions of the proceedings for approval by the Executive Committee.
The election comes as part of a two-day consultation for the analysis of technical, administrative and financial matters that are pertinent to IICA’s member states.
In his address, the Minister of Agriculture of Guyana, Hon. Zulfikar Mustapha praised the progress of agri food system developments in the Caribbean. He also noted that President Irfaan Ali was elected as the lead spokesperson in the Caribbean to comment on agriculture and that President’s Ali’s recommendation to CARICOM for the development of a Ministerial Taskforce to advance the agri food system was now not only implemented but extremely active and as a result, tremendous progress has been made within the past three months on the topic. The Minister further noted that Guyana recently concluded a successful dialogue on food systems with several stakeholders who presented numerous suggestions and comments that will be considered in the drafting of the document that is to be presented to the United Nations.
The Agriculture Minister also stated that, “The Taskforce was also able to host the CARICOM Food Safety Summit dialogue. We are hopeful, that Caribbean States will go with one voice to the UN Food Summit. The Director-General would’ve alluded to the fact that we need to have a strong voice and stand as a united front in order to advance the agri-food system in the Caribbean,”
Further, specific mention was made of the significant setbacks endured by the country despite the several successes of the past ten months, with the Minister elaborating on the situation in Guyana “… since last August, Guyana has made several advances in infrastructural development and boosted production and productivity. Farmers also commenced large-scale production of none traditional crops, while also maintaining the production of traditional crops. With all those successes, we’ve recently suffered serious setbacks.
Not only because of the ongoing global pandemic, COVID-19, which saw farmers scaling down on production and other agriculture activities, but recently we’ve suffered one of the most devastating natural disasters in our country’s history. For weeks, Guyana has been battling with severe flooding as a result of the onset of the rainy season. It is now being considered a level two, and in some parts of the country, a level three disaster. A majority of the agriculture sector has been destroyed, thousands of families were displaced, we’ve seen severe losses in both the crops and livestock industries with almost 90 percent of our crops being destroyed,”
While IICA has pledged its support to both Guyana and Suriname to further assist the countries with their flood-relief efforts, Minister Mustapha has further stated that the CARICOM ministerial task force is also looking at mitigating measures that can be employed.
“Things like insurance, and how we can approach and properly implement that. We have to further discuss those measures and come up with ideas that will also impact vulnerable and developing countries and economies in the Caribbean. The Caribbean is also heavily dependent on imports and as a Taskforce; we’ve discussed reducing those imports by 25 percent by 2025. This will require improved infrastructure through budgetary allocation, as well as improved facilities for our farmers,”
The headquarters of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture in San Jose, Costa Rica.
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