Editorial | CARICOM’s food plan seems sound initiative

Its plan to allow a dual track approach to projects apart, the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) potentially most consequential initiatives in recent times must be its plan to slash the community food import bill by a quarter within three years – or “25 by ‘25”, as the proposal has been dubbed.

But this worthy idea, which received final endorsement from the community’s leaders at their summit in Belize last week, highlights a critical weakness in CARICOM – how it keeps its citizens in the dark about details of its projects and plans. Usually, the community speaks about them in broad sweeps, absent of key underpinnings and data. The upshot: an inability by interested people, other than government bureaucrats and favoured private sector leaders, to offer critical analyses of the programmes.

Fixing this flaw, as this newspaper previously advised her, must be a priority of CARICOM’s still new secretary general, Carla Barnett. She has already had six months in the job, fast approaching the time when the tenure of managers becomes well defined.

The irony of CARICOM’s lack of popular engagement was obvious at the post-summit press conference in Belize. Barbados’ prime minister, Mia Mottley, who is responsible for single market issues in the community’s quasi-cabinet and chairs a committee overseeing new initiatives, urged buy-in from the region’s population for the agriculture project, for which Guyana’s president, Irfaan Ali, has the lead.

At the summit, Dr Ali briefed his colleagues on the scheme – providing, according to Belize’s prime minister, Johnny Briceño, “a sort of matrix” of the types of crops that could be grown as substitutes for imports, the amount of land it will require, the technology to be employed and the investment needed for the venture. Indeed, Ms Mottley disclosed that Dr Ali will host an investment conference in Georgetown on May 19 to 21 “where we are seeking to bring together both the public and private sectors in order to determine what the investment opportunities are”.

NOT MADE PUBLIC

Yet, neither Dr Ali’s presentation nor the background studies that informed it, are public. They can’t be found – at least not in this newspaper’s search – on the website of the CARICOM secretariat, except for references to the initiative in the post-conference communiqué. Mr Briceño did, however, said at the Belize press conference that Dr Ali’s matrix and analysis could be made available to journalists.

The larger issue, though, is that this initiative isn’t new. The core idea stretches far back to the 1970s Regional Food Plan and various iterations since then.

The matter, though, now has greater urgency in the context of global warming, disruption in global supply chains and rising food prices. In Jamaica it is particularly poignant at this time in the face of the consideration being given by the Government to suspending CARICOM’s common external tariff (CET), as well as domestic duties, on chicken meat, one of the foods being given priority attention under the initiative.

Up-to-date figures on CARICOM’s imports aren’t readily available, but up to 2016, based on data from only 12 of the 15 members, the bill was US$21.5 billion. Significantly, however, five years earlier, the import figure for the entire 15-member community was US$24.4 billion. However, until the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, overall imports would have grown in the post-2011 period as regional economies recovered, albeit slowly, from the Great Recession of 2008. Expansion in tourism would have helped to drive that growth, especially for foods, which is estimated to have reached around US$6 billion on the eve of the pandemic, or 25 per cent of the 2016 import bill.

FOOD IMPORT BILL

Jamaica, with a pre-COVID-19 food import bill hovering at around US$1 billion, or a quarter of the island’s imports, would have accounted for approximately 17 per cent of what CARICOM spent buying food from abroad. Domestic analysts, including government agricultural officials, have estimated that Jamaica could displace up to a fifth of its food imports with domestically grown substitutes.

That possibility is roughly in line with CARICOM’s expectation under its “25 by ’25” strategy. Significantly, too, as this newspaper has consistently noted, slashing the food bill by 20 per cent would release more than J$30 billion for possible investment in the domestic economy, a chunk of which finds its way into financing new areas of agriculture and value-added production. The poultry industry could be one of those sectors – as was noted by Prime Minister Mottley.

Currently, the Barbadian leader noted, CARICOM imports US$200 million worth of chicken meat annually. The region could readily develop the capacity to meet its full requirement, if it could supply the feeds.

The feed component accounts for up to 70 per cent of the cost of producing poultry. Growing the feeds regionally, however, would require 25,000 hectares of land for corn and soybeans, which Guyana has offered. But other states, including Belize and Suriname with their significant land mass, as well as Jamaica, would also be looked to for the production of these and other crops.

Jamaica’s endorsement of the regional food initiative, and the centrality of the poultry sector in the plan, raises questions of how much the agriculture minister, Pearnel Charles Jr, knew when he broached the possibility of suspending tariffs on chicken meat to allow competition with domestic producers to attack food inflation, and whether, in doing so, he had the imprimatur of Prime Minister Andrew Holness.

CARICOM leaders have, for long, talked a lot about growing more of what the region consumes. Relatively little has been done. Prime Minister Mottley was right about what needs to happen to move the needle this time. She said: “... it requires political will and requires bringing together the complexities of the issues – from insurance in a climate crisis, to access to financing … to the removal of (trade) barriers, to technology and to access to land.”

Jamaica should note the last bit. The island’s “most fertile ... A-1 soil”, which is Bernard Lodge, St Catherine, shouldn’t be planted with concrete to grow new cities. It should be left for agriculture.