Honourable Robert Persaud, Minster of Agriculture
Ms. Florita Kentish, Representative of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
Representatives of Member States of the Caribbean Community
Representatives of Regional and International Organisations
Private Sector Representatives
Members of the Media
Ladies and Gentlemen
Let me welcome you to this Workshop for the Validation of Regional Policy for Food and Nutrition Security. Also, let me at the outset thank both the FAO and the Government of Italy for their continued support in assisting the Region with the development of a Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy, and also for providing funding for this Workshop.
Ladies and Gentlemen, there are those who have observed that our Region is not as food secure as we should be. We find ourselves at a point where the Region’s access to safe and nutritious food is plagued by a number of factors including the rising cost of food, the rising cost of agriculture inputs, the displacement of small domestic farmers by cheaper food imports which are not necessarily healthy foods, the macroeconomic costs arising from growing food import bill, the sharp downturn in remittances and the increasing health costs of treating chronic diseases associated with nutritionally poor diets.
This critical situation that we are now facing raises the question: How did we get here? The President of Guyana, H. E. Bharrat Jagdeo, CARICOM’s Lead Head of Government for Agriculture put it eloquently when he addressed the World Food Summit in Rome in 2009 – “the Region was seduced by the importation of cheap food and paid less attention to food security… The soaring food and agriculture commodity prices 2007/2008 and the financial crisis of the last few years caught the Region unprepared and put food security at the forefront for the Regional agenda.”
In the wake of the increasing expenditure on food imports within CARICOM, declining job opportunities in the rural sector, and the soaring prices of agricultural inputs, the CARICOM Heads of Government, in 2009, adopted the Liliendaal Declaration in which they acknowledged that inadequate resources (financial, human and natural) for agricultural development is a major impediment to dealing expeditiously and effectively with the constraints on the development of the Region’s domestic food industry.
The Heads of Government recognised that the challenges we face in ensuring our food and nutrition security are multi-dimensional and require an urgent and coherent response in a wide range of sectors, namely, food production, trade, health, education and social welfare. This situation had brought home to our Member States’ the need to refocus their policies, programmes and investments at national and regional levels to ensure stable supplies of healthy food for their citizens, with the highest feasible proportion of local content and value added.
This background which I have just given, provides the rationale for the Regional Policy for Food and Nutrition Security which in turn gives effect to the Liliendaal Declaration which makes the “commitment to pursue a strategic approach to transforming the agriculture sector into an internationally competitive sector with increased capacity to contribute to the sustained economic development of the Region, the economic livelihood of entrepreneurs, the rural sector and to food and nutrition security.”
In the past, the different dimensions of food and nutrition security have been addressed separately, resulting in a mix of policies that have not had the desired results. Breaking with tradition, this draft Policy envisages simultaneous, holistic and concerted action on a wider front.
The draft Regional policy addresses food access, food safety, stability of supply, nutrition security, and health and well-being, viewed from the perspective of both the consumer and the producer, and not solely from the producer as we have tended to do it in the past. This is a significant departure from equating food security and food availability.
In the process of formulating this Policy, we have benefited from substantial inputs from Member States, regional stakeholders and international partners. As a result, the Draft Policy provides an empirically-grounded operational framework of reference for the achievement of food and nutrition security in our Community.
Ladies and Gentlemen, in view of the above, an equally diverse set of actions is needed if we are to make progress in the reduction of hunger and improving our people’s access to safe and nutritious foods. The Jagdeo Initiative, which seeks to remove the key binding constraints to the production and trade in competitive agricultural commodities, provides the framework under which our Member States have agreed to collaborate in order to meet their common objectives.
As you deliberate on this Draft Policy, I invite you to consider the following action-oriented initiatives which will provide the impetus for the implementation of the Policy once adopted.
As a Region:
• We need to reduce the total food import bill through increased regional content in food consumption, increased use of local inputs feeds and fertilizers, and increasing the productivity of land, labour and capital in the agricultural sector;
• We need to increase public expenditure in agriculture, focused on rural infrastructure, research and development, agricultural health and food safety, and market information systems;
• We need to influence the taste and preference of our households to consume nutritionally balanced foods as a means of safeguarding against chronic non-communicable diseases which are prevalent in the Region;
• We need to develop agricultural industries buttressed by increased private sector investments and regional production;
• We need to attract the youth to becoming agriculture entrepreneurs and;
• We need to take effective action, both to mitigate against the effects of climate change, a major threat to our food security, and to adapt its consequences.
In closing, let me wish you all the success in your discussions as we seek to develop a viable Food and Nutrition Security Policy for the Region.
I thank you.
