Jagdeo urges greater regional support for agriculture

By Samuel Sukhnandan

As the Caribbean Community continues to face great challenges in agriculture with an already high food importation bill, former President Bharrat Jagdeo is calling on regional governments to work towards forging greater political support for the agriculture sector. The former Guyanese leader was addressing participants at the “Jagdeo Initiative” seminar, held at the Guyana International Conference Centre on Friday, as part of activities to mark GuyExpo 2012.

Jagdeo said, “Without political support in each country behind this sector, then any technical initiative you have – no matter how hard they work and how good the strategies are – they are not going to deliver the results. We need to think about how we can build the political support for this sector across the region.”
Agriculture, he said, must be a priority for each government of Caricom member states. He noted that agriculture has proven to bring about economic growth, income, and employment opportunities and wealth for each country. He said the “Jagdeo Initiative” focuses on national development and was built in a way that if it lacked political support, then individual countries – if they are not affected – can move forward, reaping enormous benefits.
According to him, GuyExpo presents a good opportunity to focus on agriculture on the region, but must be used to see what Guyana, as a country by itself, can do to attract the kinds of investment needed to help in the expansion of this important sector. “Agriculture cannot be developed by governments alone, but through a framework. It is the private investment that will create the scale, because in as much as agriculture is important for food security at the local and community level, unless we do this at large scale, the impact will be localised with national and regional boundaries, when our playing field should be the rest of the world,” he posited.

Globally competitive standard
Jagdeo said the region must now move beyond producing for itself and look to producing for the rest of the world, tapping into opportunities for greater income. With the world population anticipated to grow to nine billion people by 2050, Caricom will need to step up and play its part in the development of economies. Jagdeo pointed out that there is a sense of urgency to improve on agriculture, based on the rapid changes to the trade regime and the fact that most Caricom countries have been confronted, with several bilateral requests to negotiate free trade agreements with a number of developed countries.
Jagdeo said, “We thought unless we brought agriculture to a globally competitive standard, we, as a region, will not only lose traditional markets, but increase the food bill and we had a sense of panic when food prices escalated steeply a few years back.” During that time, the initiative was first launched throughout the region, and there was a spur of interest in the sector, but that soon died. It was left to the technical people to move the initiative along, despite the fact each government was cognisant of the benefits of the initiatives.
The financial crisis and world recession also impacted on the initiative. The former president believes that there is a greater sense of urgency to have focus placed on implementing the “Jagdeo Initiative” in each country in the region, given the current state of affairs in the world and the pressures Caricom countries face. These pressures include financial instability, current debt balances, and high food and fuel importation bills.
He said, “When you examine the monies allocated to the agriculture sector and these initiatives, very few countries find it as a priority.” Jagdeo said while Trinidad remains highly dependent on, and places all of its focus on, its oil and gas sector, other Caricom countries are focused on making the financial and tourism sectors a top priority, instead of agriculture.
The former leader said it is his hope that policy decisions made by all regional governments will have the full attention of the sector. He made reference to Guyana, Belize and Suriname, as countries that have some level of political support behind this sector.
“If we continue to look at dormant sectors in the region that have almost plateaued, they still can grow, but the rate of growth of where we are now and where we need to be to create the kind of wealth that our young people need now, and the kind of jobs and income they want and to keep them employed here – we have to realise that a lot of it will not come from the traditional sectors.”

Take action now!
Focus, he said, must be shifted to diversifying and improving agriculture. Jagdeo called on regional governments to take action now, so that not only their debts are reduced, but their people are fed. Guyana, he said, relied heavily on the sugar, rice and bauxite sectors for income and growth in the economy, but now, this has changed as there are at least six new and emerging sectors: information communication technology, tourism, large-scale agriculture, aquaculture, oil and gas, the services sector, and manganese, among others.
He said sugar is still a major sector of the economy, but when production is down, growth of the entire economy is not affected due, to investments in these emerging sectors. He is, therefore, advising regional governments to explore their agriculture potential, in order to bring growth and development to their countries.
Meanwhile, Officer in Charge of the Caricom General Council, Safia Alli, who spoke on behalf of Caricom Secretary General Irwin LaRocque in his absence, congratulated the government for taking the initiative to host the seminar on the “Jagdeo Initiative”. It is timely given that fact that Agriculture Month will be hosted in Guyana in the month of October, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will host World Food Day, and the Caribbean Week of Agriculture will also be hosted in October.
Alli said, “While the seminar is focused on discussing progress in the agriculture sector here, I hope that it brings into the forefront critical issues that are important to the Caribbean Community.”
The Caricom official noted that the “Jagdeo Initiative” was conceptualised at the time when the community was seeking to maximise its potential in agriculture by developing interventions to remove the constraints to progress in the sector.

Food secure
She said, “That thrust is important now, as it was important then, given the region’s food import bill, the sustained high prices, the risk involved in climate change, and the global financial crises.”
According to her, all of these challenges directly impact on Caricom’s focus on food and nutrition security and combating non communicable diseases, as well as the constraint of limited financing and investment in agriculture. “It is clear that most of the challenges regarding agriculture and rural development are beyond the capabilities of a single member state to resolve on its own. We are confident that steady progress in addressing the “Jagdeo Initiative”…, at the national and regional levels, will open the gateway to vast profitable opportunities to the region’s producers,” the Caricom official stated.
Caricom, she said, is cognisant of the need to expand the pace of the “Jagdeo Initiative”, and is actively involved in assessing and evaluating the mechanisms set up, to recommend and provide recommendations on the various areas identified. Alli said member states are being encouraged to look at financing more agricultural projects aimed at developing this sector in each country, to bring growth and sustainability to their economies as they provide food for themselves.
She noted that some countries have taken steps to improve and develop agriculture, but more can be done to propel growth in this sector and that will make the region more viable and food secure.
The “Jagdeo Initiative” identifies and defines the key constraints facing agricultural development in the Caribbean region. The ‘new agriculture vision’ aims to make the sector be more than the production of food by exploring the numerous opportunities that exist for agro-businesses, which will create more employment, increase export earnings, and the income of all stakeholders, especially farmers. It also aims to reposition agriculture in the Caribbean region and to develop and implement targeted, focused and practical interventions at both the regional and national levels to overcome the constraints.
This exercise, spearheaded by Jagdeo, has been endorsed throughout the Caribbean for its thorough analysis of the state of agriculture, its hard look at internal and external factors, and for deepening the discussion on fundamental areas that need improvement, reform, and/ or initiation.
Limited financing and inadequate new investments, outdated and inefficient agricultural health and food safety systems, inadequate research and development, and a fragmented and disorganised private sector are some of the constraints identified. Insufficient land and water distribution and management systems, deficient and uncoordinated risk management measures and inadequate transport systems are other elements outlined in the initiative.