Central America is a competitor not a partner in food security

Mar 08, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The President of Guyana seems to have run out of ideas. Having been congratulated for his work in developing a regional food security strategy, the President continued to press the same button when he met with the leaders of the Central American Integration System (SICA)
He made a pitch at the 4th CARICOM-SICA summit, calling on the two blocs to work together to address food security in the hemisphere. He went as far as saying that the two sides have the solution to hemisphere’s food security problems. His efforts were rebuffed – food and nutrition security received only fleeting mention in the joint CARICOM-SICA declaration.
CARICOM has agreed to reduce its food import bill by 25 percent by 2025. It is an ambitious target, one which is not likely to be met. But there are opportunities for Guyana in that process since Guyana is a major agricultural producer and has the potential to be the breadbasket of the Caribbean.
Guyana’s food production however, cannot compete with that of Central America. The countries of Central America are high volume and low cost food producers, half of which are exported to markets in the United States. Their production dwarfs that of Guyana. For example, last year Guatemala was expected to produce 2.7 million metric tonnes of sugar; Guyana produced less than 60,000 tonnes.
Guatemala is producing more than 45 times the volume of sugar than Guyana. And it is producing sugar at a price which is less than half of Guyana’s cost of production.
Suppose Guatemala decides to swamp the Caribbean market with its sugar. What happens then to both the packaged sugar which Guyana produces and exports to Caribbean markets and which has been deemed so critical to keeping GUYSUCO afloat? The President therefore must view Central America as a competitor in food security and not as a partner. He must not get carried away with his food security platform. It may work for CARICOM but has limitations elsewhere.
SICA has its own regional agricultural strategy. It employs a strong focus on developing climate smart agriculture, especially in light of the threats posed by climate change. The strategy favours food and nutrition security and the transformation and reorientation of the agricultural sector as well as the strengthening of family farming so as to provide increased value to rural livelihoods and provide greater opportunities for women, rural youth and should generally reduce inequalities.
Despite this and the fact that Central America is the major producer of primary agricultural produce, agricultural cooperation with CARICOM traditionally has been low on SICA’s radar. The CARICOM market is much too small and fragmented to entice Central America. No wonder the 2007 CARICOM-SICA Plan of Action was totally silent on agriculture. It dealt with cooperation in the fields of human resource development, health, housing, the environment, foreign policy coordination, crime and security, air transport, tourism and culture.
Agriculture was also not on the mind of the incoming Chairman of CARICOM, John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize when he addressed the 4th CARICOM-SICA Summit last week. He did not even mention the word ‘agriculture” in his presentation.
Yet, President Ali took up the task of speaking about agriculture. But it is not clear exactly what he meant when he said, “The areas that you have a competitive advantage are almost identical areas we have identified in CARICOM to boost production and improve competitiveness.”
Surely, if there is a convergence between the areas in which CARICOM plans to increase production and the areas in which Central America economies enjoy a comparative advantage, this has only one logical outcome. It is Central America which will displace the Caribbean should it come on board the 25 by 2025 agenda.
CARICOM is keen on sourcing, as far as possible, its food needs from within the Region. At its recent Inter-sessional, the Heads mandated the CARICOM Secretariat to undertake further work on identifying ten (10) major non-food items imported into the Region for which there is production capacity and potential and significant demand.
If the intention is to cut regional food exports by 25 percent by 2025, this would entail less extra-regional imports and greater substitution of these imports from within the Region. Central America is, however, an extra-regional source and the Caribbean would not be reducing extra-regional imports if the countries of SICA were to come on board the Region’s food security agenda.
It would also hurt Guyana’s plans to become a major regional food supplier. Someone needed to remind President Ali of this fact.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

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