(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Single Market Advisor with the CARICOM Secretariat, Ms Desiree Field Ridley has cited Agriculture as one of the Community’s critical responses to the global challenges now impacting the Region’s economic well-being.
In her presentation titled, The Caribbean Community- Challenges as we proceed into the 21 Century, Ms Field-Ridley told the 44th Annual Meeting of the Caribbean Food Crop Society (CFCS) in Miami, on Monday, 14 July 2008 that the decision by CARICOM Heads of Government to move to the CSME and the deepening and widening of the integration movement was prompted by a number of realities facing the Region.
She pointed to the global environment which she stated was less accommodating and acknowledged that the Region was “not producing for the markets which we did have, including our own but also that our survival and the achievement of our goals would depend on increased and competitive production, particularly given our dependence on trade.”
Addressing an audience comprising predominantly experts in the field of Agriculture, Ms Field Ridley – widely recognised as a Leading Expert in the Community on the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) – emphasized that the role of agriculture in the economic development of the Region had long been recognized by CARICOM Heads of Government who pointed to the vision which stated that “no later than 2015 the sector would have made substantial progress towards contributing significantly to national and regional development and to economic, social and environmental sustainability; has a transparent regulatory framework at national and regional levels, that promotes and facilitates investment and attracts (direct and indirect) inflows; has significantly transformed its processes and products and stimulated the innovative entrepreneurial capacity of Caribbean agricultural and rural communities and has enabled the Region (as a whole) to achieve an acceptable level of food and nutrition security that is not easily disrupted by natural and or manmade disasters.”
She informed that for the past 15 years the Community had sought to meet the challenges posed by the economic and policy obligations deriving from multilateral trade agreements. “We are cognisant that economic development involves a transformation from traditional to modern and that international trade would tend to hasten this transformation. We are also even more cognisant that there is no guarantee of success. The economic challenges faced by CARICOM countries are serious enough to warrant grave concerns of rearranging the economic factors of production towards successful economic, social and sustainable transformation,” Ms Field-Ridley informed.
She suggested that diversification of the economies in the Region and the recombination of land, labour and capital was an obvious strategy for renewed growth and development. The CSME Expert told the audience that the Treaty of Chaguaramas created the framework for addressing and facilitating the efficient use of economic factors of production across the Community. She added that while some CARICOM member States had large acreages of land, skilled labour was becoming scarce and capital was grossly insufficient and opined that such challenges were as a result of the inequities caused by agricultural subsidies in the developed countries.
“These subsidies threaten viability of farm enterprises in the Community and contribute to the cheaper imports which in itself have largely influenced the taste and preferences of the consumer away from more costly local and domestically produced goods. The end result has been import dependency on food. This situation is exacerbated by the downward trend of agricultural investments in the sector,” she highlighted.
The CSME Expert said that the Community has come to recognize the need for new thrust in agriculture and in 2005 the Heads of Government agreed that the immediate focus on agriculture should address the key binding constraints to agriculture production.
She suggested that action which had been slow in the past could be undertaken through concerted regional action on some immediate priorities.
These were identified as attracting investment and financing into the sector; upgrading of facilities for intra-regional agricultural trade and transport; strengthened regional collaboration in agricultural research and development and in Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) provisions, particularly by cooperation among national research and development bodies and the revitalisation of existing institutions with increased funding of regional bodies; market intelligence – sharing of information with respect to demand and supply for agricultural commodities; strengthening of Private Sector Organizations, as a medium to facilitate, develop and empower entrepreneurial capacity throughout the value chain and sloving the transportation inadequacies which include the chicken and egg conundrum of not enough export production to attract transport and not enough transport to encourage and support production.
“We have given regional focus to the financing constraint with a Regional Donor Conference in June 2007 and an Investment Forum in June 2008. But these will only be as good as governments are able to provide the enabling environment – physical and institutional infrastructure and incentives – for attracting investment. Since policies must emphasise competitiveness which supports commodity chain approaches that seek linkages with other sectors, investment ventures must be supported by the harmonisation of planning and financing policies across the Region. The Community needs to ensure these policies dictate public investment for rural and marketing and agricultural health and food safety infrastructure, while specifically rewarding the private sector for the use of those measures which ensure the safety of food from farm to fork,” the CSME expert asserted. She pointed to the added challenge of how to organise and prioritise the supporting investments in technology, research and marketing when all were needed simultaneously and added that the issue of the coordination and management of the different stages and levels of the production and distribution chain was also a challenge to be tackled.
