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CARIBBEAN: “We Must Produce More and Consume Less”

Bert Wilkinson

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Jun 20 2008 (IPS) - For the first time in living memory, Caribbean governments invested time and large sums of money to organise an emergency food summit at their trade bloc’s headquarters in Guyana aimed specifically at dealing with the global food crisis and the region’s spiraling import bill.

The good news is there is an abundance of rich but uncultivated land in the area ranging from Belize in Central America to Suriname on the South American mainland.

The two-day regional agricultural investment forum earlier this month was hailed as a resounding success, if only because authorities were able to bring together, in one room, commercial bankers, two heads of government, cabinet ministers, farmers and representatives from multilateral institutions like the World Bank to focus on a single topic – the need to produce more food in the Caribbean.

“We also want to point out that this is the first time that people felt motivated enough to bring out their proposed projects in the open for all to see, asking for them to be financed because they want their projects to grow. It is a very good start,” said Jamaican businessman James Moss-Solomon, who headed the planning task force for the conference.

Commercial banks have indicated an interest in immediately funding four of 22 projects offered for financing at the meeting and have asked for additional work to be done on others.

The projects seeking financial backing range from 96,000 dollars to strengthen eco-tourism possibilities in Barbados, to 8.0 million dollars for white Mennonite groups in Belize to expand cashew nut production, to 7.5 million dollars for the government of the twin-island federation of St. Kitts and Nevis to transform derelict sugar plantations on the islands.

One of the more interesting proposals came from North West Organics of Guyana, which has for years been involved in a massive project to preserve four species of turtles that nest on a 100-mile stretch of beach on Guyana’s northern coast.

Anxious to reduce the killing of the turtles, including the well-loved leatherback, spokeswoman Annete Arjoon says her society could reduce the slaughter of nesting female turtles if only the conservation body could find the money to increase organic cocoa production for export to places like Britain, turn subsistence cassava farming into value-added products like cassava bread and get residents into commercial production of the manicole or heart of palm vegetable for export. France is a major consumer of the product. If the project got off the ground, the need of area residents to hunt turtles for eggs and meat would be drastically reduced.

The Mennonite groups in Belize, which have helped the Central American Caribbean nation to be largely food self-sufficient in the last 20 years, want to put 10,000 acres of land under cashew nut production. In nearby Jamaica, the ministry of agriculture is looking for 4.5 million dollars to raise sheep and increase production to 2.3 million pounds of mutton and lamb by 2013 – or half the value of 2006 imports.

Moss-Solomon says that there has been no other time in recent Caribbean memory when such a concerted effort has been made to grow more food, because as Prime Minister Patrick Manning of Trinidad and Tobago recently warned, “The days of cheap food are over.” He says the region is also aware that its annual food bill of about 3.5 billion dollars will no doubt skyrocket further by the end of this year given continuing spikes in prices and devastating floods in U.S. farming states that have wiped out crops.

Jacqueline Rawlins, who represented the Agriculture Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, says the forum has asked the bank to consider amending its charter to lend to farmers from outside of its home base, as many countries do not have the available land to significantly increase production.

Oil and gas-rich Trinidad and Tobago, the trade bloc’s largest economy, plans to swiftly invest in farmland in neighbouring Guyana, which has a population of about 730,000 occupying a land mass of 215,000 square kilometres. Food produced in Guyana would end up on tables in Trinidad and Tobago.

“We must now embark upon greater fuel efficiency, as well as the pursuit of alternative sources of energy,” Manning said. “We must ourselves produce more and consume less, and, above all else, we must move towards the highest level of food production and the stimulation of the agro-industry. We are heading for a global crisis.”