Ramotar urges political will to achieve regional food security

Guyana’s President, Donald Ramotar has issued a call for political, entrepreneurial, and popular will to achieve food security in the Caribbean region, noting that food security, as a primary policy objective for the region, must be embraced by all stakeholders.
The president emphasised the need for “a binding political undertaking by decision-makers at the highest level, both regionally and within individual national jurisdictions that regional food security is an objective to be pursued with single minded zeal.
In addition, the region’s private sector must also be recruited to the view that food security is good for regional business as an end in its own right, and for the other indirect economic advantages that it will bring to the regional economy more widely.”

Agricultural production
The head of state, speaking at a forum hosted by the University of the West Indies, and held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Trinidad urged that agricultural production and food security should not be allowed to remain the exclusive preserve of agricultural scientists and economists.
While in the country to participate in the 34th regular meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean, President Ramotar was invited to address the event on food security, a topic that is very important to Guyana.
“Ours has long been an economy with a significant agricultural component, indeed for many years our productive output was dominated by the agriculture sector. In addition, with the quasi-cabinet structure of Caricom, Guyana holds responsibility for agriculture and my predecessor was the architect of the initiative now known as the Jagdeo Initiative for accelerating development in the agriculture sector of the region,” President Ramotar stated.
He noted also that there are few areas that are ripe with opportunities for regional integration to be accelerated, and for the benefits of regional integration to be demonstrated in agriculture and food production.
Referring to the estimated regional food import bill of between US$ 3 billion and US$ 5 billion, the president explained that this represents $ 3 billion worth of business opportunity for Caribbean producers.
“Were the region able to meet this requirement through domestic production, this would represent billions of dollars of investment in our region, tens of thousands of jobs for Caribbean people, hundreds of growing and increasingly profitable Caribbean business enterprises, billions of dollars of avoided imports every year, therefore improving our external balances,” he explained.
Labour resources
Pointing out that Guyana has hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land waiting to be put under cultivation; President Ramotar observed that Guyana and many other Caricom countries have unutilised and under-utilised labour resources, especially if the story of youth unemployment in the region is to be believed.
President Ramotar also urged the promotion and facilitation of large scale private investment in agricultural enterprises as he cited the Rupununi Rice Project being invested in by the Kyffin Simpson group and agricultural investments by ANSA McAL group in Guyana.