‘Lead’ CARICOM Heads must now put their hands up on timeline for Food Security Terminal

It would not surprise us one bit if, in the wake of the promulgation of Guyana’s first trillion-dollar budget, rather than dwell more exhaustively on institutional allocations and how these can /will impact on the various sectors, we were to be criticized for continuing to anchor our editorial focus to the regional worry over matters to do with food security, particularly since there has been no definitive indication of any significant improvement in the status quo focus – particularly in the smaller, agriculturally weak countries in the region - over the past year and more. The disclosure that the region, led by the Heads of Government of Guyana and Barbados were to be the Caribbean’s ‘point persons’ in pursuit of the enhancement of our food security bona fides benefitted from widespread public disclosure in the Caribbean and beyond, the importance of the mission becoming incrementally enhanced through an increasing awareness of the magnitude of the problem. We had, for good measure, also thrown in the target of reducing the region’s food imports by 25% by 2025.

While, in recent weeks there have been expressions of confidence about the likelihood of us reaching that target, experience must surely have instructed that we resist the temptation to put our pots on the fire before definitive evidence to that effect emerges. As things stand – and while there has been some information recently disseminated about maritime developments linked to the trans-national movement of food as part of the wider regional food security undertaking - some of the pieces are yet to drop into place. The one that comes readily to mind is the planned creation of a regional food terminal which, outside of the food itself, is the next most critical cog in the regional food security wheel. It has to be said – however unpalatable it may be in some quarters – that the publicity associated with the rolling out of what ranks in the top tier of the collective pursuits ever undertaken by the Caribbean, appears not to have been matched by the requisite energy. Indeed, it never really seemed as though CARICOM, as our premier regional institution, appeared to have been thoroughly involved in providing timely updates on the pace of progress towards the readiness of the Food Terminal. One would have assumed that this would have been a critical suitable assignment for the regional body and the mind truly boggles over what appears to be the limited role that CARICOM appears to have played in keeping the Caribbean, as a whole, continually ‘in the loop’ insofar as the pace of progress towards the completion of the Terminal is concerned.

That said, several weeks ago the Stabroek Business had cause to ‘call out’ Ministers Mustapha and Weir, Agriculture Ministers of Guyana and Barbados, respectively, for meeting in Georgetown but neglecting to seize the moment to make a public comment on the situation regarding the pace of progress of what, by any stretch of the imagination, is the most important across-the-region assignment being undertaken at this time. That, in our view, was, in the circumstances, inexcusable. Here the Stabroek Business runs the considerable risk of being repetitive on this issue though we humbly submit that our persistence has been altogether linked to the refusal, for whatever reason, by the ‘lead’ regional governments to provide regular updates – attended by timelines for the completion of the various phases of the project. Here we are ‘calling out’ Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali and Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley (along with their respective Ministers of Agriculture) who were certainly energetic in embracing the accolades bestowed by the region as a whole for their respective critical roles in the conceptualization of the project.

The fact of the matter is – and the seemingly worsening global food circumstances bear this out – that the food security vulnerabilities of the Caribbean dictate that we put every possible mechanism in place both to attain the 2025x25 target as well as the keep the region abreast of the pace of progress towards the full and final creation of the Food Security Terminal; 2024 must not find us running around like ‘headless chickens,’ desperately searching for ways and means through which to stave off hunger and its attendant consequences in our food-insecure member countries.