Food import reduction 25 by 2025

Feb 27, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall 

Kaieteur News- I am as pleased as a porcupine today, and it has to do with Food Security Master, Excellency Irfaan Ali.  It’s rare that a sitting president goes out of his way to prove people like me right.  He did with the foreign food import bill.  I have frequently said publicly that His Excellency Ali is more than a president.

He is a performer cum operator plus propagandizer.  Food Security Master Ali is the leader identified in the CARICOM bloc to spearhead the 25 by 2025 initiative.  I expand: 25% reduction in the foreign food import bill by 2025.  Whither the highly slickly marketed 25% reduction?  How to address this serious food issue, when the leader of the initiative cannot be taken seriously.  Seemingly, whatever is placed in his hand, whispered in his ear, or heard in his head, Food Security Master Ali simply goes out and blows holes in the microphones.

On March 19, 2024, President Ali was on fire: “now in the region, we have set ourselves a goal of achieving a reduction of import by 25 percent by 2025.”  Warming and thrilling, I must say.  He continued at a still higher temperature: “A recent review in February 2024, puts our progress at close to 70% of our objective since starting the initiative three years ago.”

Forget about reasoning.  If so much (70%) could have been done in a mere three years, then how is it that residual smidgen of 30% is such an uphill task?  How come it didn’t inch forward another 10% or so, notwithstanding that laden donkey cart of challenges and excuses?  I go further.  On May 5, 2023, the WHO declared the lethal COVID-19 pandemic to be officially over.  Yet 70% progress was made in the two prior years of COVID-19, and one year after its retreat (2023-24), So, how and why is CARICOM foreign food import bill reduction, that remaining 30%, now such a daunting proposition in 2025?  I proceed still further: why five more years is now needed, expanded agenda and all?

First things first.  I have heard about being five months behind, even five quarters off the drawing board projections in extreme circumstances.  But goddammit, not five years.  I withdraw that swear word: against my teachings, not the best way to use the first three letters of that word, and it is a head of state involved.  My own.  Sometimes, I question the condition of his head.  Dandruff is not a concern, so get that one out of sight.

However, here we are in 2025, and there is the gathering of regional political panjandrums -CARICOM.  There is Excellency Ali in full flow again.  “We have seen significant increase in private sector investment and lending in the agriculture sector and a food production chain within the region”. That was extracted from an INews bulletin dated February 22, 25 and captioned, “2025 ‘worrying’ for regional food security – Pres. Ali as CARICOM refocuses efforts.”  To my fellow citizens, who are not so familiar with the verbal wiles of powermongers, I share something.  “Refocuses” is politician speak for we don’t have a clue about what the so-and-so we are doing, but we are bent on doing anything in the hope of getting it right sometime.  It is 25% by 2030, and an expanded food security agenda for flavoring.  To CARICOM and Food Security Master Ali, it is fine to think all the people in the region, none more than Guyanese, are complete blithering idiots.  No one should make that mistake at latitudes close to me.

Now get a hold on this.  Among the reasons tabled by President Ali for his failure to deliver are climate change, logistics, and rising prices.  As reasons go, those three reek of hilarity and the shaky.  Neither of the three are new on the market; all three are now as aged as one of Demerara’s better rums.  Said differently, they have bearing, but would or should have been factored into the food security hopper.  Not to be left behind, SN threw its two barbells into the food security calculus: ‘trade uncertainties, natural disasters’ (“CARICOM scheme to cut food imports extended by five years” -SN February 26, 2025).  Frankly, SN, “scheme” is a shade on the mischief side.  What natural disasters Mr. Stabroek News and where, pray: the Repsol oil spill in Peru?  Sorry, that question is redirected at the superstar heading this visionary agenda, Excellency, Dr. Ali.  Try this: I could manage to buy a pound of grapes and a sack of mandarin oranges once every six months.  Now, I leave it to Guyanese imagination and calculation to determine how much the foreign food bill is for this country, when the political and business bigshots stuff themselves daily with such fine and healthy luxuries.  Throw in all the other luxury food items (Brussel sprouts, asparagus, romaine lettuce, and so forth) and there is one big foreign food import bill.  I should include expensive CIROC vodka and Johnny Walker Blue, since many in the elite setup consider those to be food.  Why not target those, so that local products could step in and reap the rewards?

Here’s the nightcap: Food Security Master Ali found whipping posts everywhere.  He’s better off starting with himself.

(Food import reduction 25 by 2025)

(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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• CARICOM, food security, foreign food import bill, hard truths, Master Ali

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