(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) In order to realise long-term growth from the agriculture sector, the Caribbean must add value to traditional crops such as sugar cane and bananas.
This view was stressed by the Minister of Agriculture of Jamaica, Hon. Dr. Christopher Tufton, when he addressed the official opening of the Caribbean Week of Agriculture in Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines on Wednesday 8 October.
Dr. Tufton, who is also chairman of the Alliance on Agriculture, a grouping of regional, hemispheric and international agencies with agriculture portfolio responsibilities including the CARICOM Secretariat, the Caribbean Agriculture Research and Development Agency (CARDI) and the Inter American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), added that the link between agriculture and industry should not be lost on the Caribbean.
“Our agriculture must serve as the base for a very strong manufacturing sector,” he said.
He added that most Caribbean countries were not richly endowed with the materials required for large scale manufacturing but should commit to maximise the potential from primary agriculture products by adding value to these. He pointed to sugar cane and bananas as two crops to which value added could be of enormous benefit, adding that the Caribbean was in a position where it could not compete with other world exporters of the commodities except by adding value.
“It is only through greater levels of value added to primary products that struggling traditional commodities would be able to survive in the face of the erosion of preferential marketing arrangements. It is only through greater levels of value added that troubled traditional commodities will be able to survive,” he said.
“The possibility of creating specialty sugar and ethanol as well as co-generation is giving impetus to our ailing sugar industry in Jamaica. Similarly our struggling banana industry in the Caribbean cannot survive as we cannot possibly compete with the Latin Americans… The industrialisation of agriculture serves as the basis for increasing farmers’ income to the overall contribution of agriculture to the economy,” Dr. Tufton added.
He said the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) provided enormous potential of market access for value added products. He however stressed that the challenge for the Caribbean lay in how to effectively use technology in agriculture in order to ensure sustainable development of the sector.
The CWA which is in its eighth year puts an annual focus on agriculture. It is a time when leaders of agriculture in the Caribbean come together, analyse the situation with respect to agriculture, exchange ideas and plan for the future.
