Regional Food Security Desk

The most recent attempt by the Caribbean to establish its food security credentials in a wider international community, where hunger and all its attendant consequences have become a serious concern would appear to have fallen, primarily to Guyana and Barbados, the former having been assigned much of the responsibility for substantive food production and the latter, for the creation of the physical infrastructure associated with the creation of the facility.

Around the time when the plan to execute the creation of the Food Terminal had been mooted, it had been disclosed that across the region, some of the smaller member countries of CARICOM had been facing very real food security problems, a disclosure that would almost have surprised, perhaps even shocked the wider region in which we had always come to see ourselves, where food sufficiency was concerned, as a region of plenty.

Here it should be noted that the disclosure of the region’s intention to establish a Food Terminal was done with much aplomb and since then, terms like ‘closer to realization’ and ‘taking shape’ have been used, presumably as indicators of the progress being made towards the full realization of the project. That said, we have heard nothing ‘concrete’ (as we say in Guyana) about just when the actual facility will actually be ‘up and running’, so to speak, the concern here being that while a bit of an information void has been created insofar as progress towards the completion of the facility is concerned, the situation in some countries in the region in terms of the earlier disclosed food security deficit is concerned, has not been reported to have changed, in which circumstances, it is not unreasonable to assume that the Food Security Terminal remains a priority.

In circumstances where the project is being touted as a collective regional initiative, it is not unreasonable to suggest that updates on the pace of progress towards the completion of the project would be a collective one, so that it would hardly be unreasonable to state that the CARICOM Secretariat would be the fittest institution to keep the region posted on the progress being made towards getting the facility up and running. Here it should be stated that no blame (as far as we are aware) can be attached to CARICOM for the information void into which we appear to have fallen insofar as updates on the project is concerned and indeed there are those who would argue that the responsibility for providing the information that would constitute the desired progress reports on the project ought correctly to fall on Guyana and Barbados.

Here it is necessary to contextualize this issue by pointing out that previous efforts to go down the regional food security road have fallen flat on their faces after being touted with much aplomb and that, truth be told, in the matter of the failure of previous initiatives to fructify, fingers of blame had been pointed mostly at Guyana, the country which is regarded as the food production giant of the Caribbean. One question that has arisen here has had to do with whether or not Guyana’s food production track record notwithstanding, the country possesses the organizational acumen to lead a food security initiative that is a matter of considerable importance to the wider region. If, in this regard, the physical capability exists, there are those who would argue that, previously, we have not proven ourselves particularly adept at properly overseeing undertakings of this nature. What makes the probing of the desirability of a timeline for the full operational readiness of the regional food security project critical is the fact that considerations of climate and conflict have created a much higher level of global vulnerability to food insecurity. The instance of the Caribbean enduring climaterelated concerns and the capacity of devastating climate calamities to throw the region into a sudden and devastating food security crisis can hardly be ruled out. What, perhaps, ought to be considered at this stage, is the creation of a modest but diligent ‘Regional Food Security Desk’ within CARICOM, charged specifically with providing progress reports and updates on the pace of progress towards the structural completion of the facility, that should include a sustained flow of information on both the food production and food distribution components of its operations. This, in the circumstances, is where in recent years, the region has been experiencing some pointed warning shots across its bows on the food security issue. This, surely, is not something that is beyond the capability of the countries concerned for bringing the Food Security Terminal to fruition.