Donovan Stanberry | Deciphering the food import bill [Part 1]

The sore matter of the size of Jamaica’s food import bill, which, in 2018, stood at US$902.3 million, has been the subject of much public discourse in recent time, particularly within the context of planned diversion of A-class agricultural lands in Bernard Lodge for housing development.

While it is good that as a nation we are focused on the critical matter of food security, it is my observation that in many instances, the debate has been driven by emotion and not informed by data and facts. The truth is, only a proper analysis of the structure of our food imports will shed any light on the portion of our food imports that can be realistically and sustainably replaced.

Before we embark on this analysis, we need to have a better understanding of the concept of food security. As defined in Jamaica’s Food and Nutritional Security Policy of 2013 and adapted from the World Food Summit 1996, a nation is said to be food secure when “all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.

This definition speaks to more than just the physical availability of food. Persons must be able to afford this food and the composition of the available food, must be such that it meets the nutritional needs. Furthermore, our food supply must be stable, that is, we should not lose access easily by virtue of financial shocks, physical and climatic shocks, or any man-made disaster.

The matter of ensuring consistent supply of safe and nutritious food, ensuring that people have economic access to food and that our agri-food system is robust enough to consistently supply this food, in the appropriate quantity and at the required quality is a key responsibility of every State, particularly within the context of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 25), which states that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing …”

While the right to food is not enshrined in our Charter of Rights in the Jamaican Constitution, I am sure that every Government of Jamaica has been concerned about the matter of food security.

PRODUCE THE MAXIMUM

Given Jamaica’s position as a Small Island Developing State, no one could realistically posit that we can, or must, produce all the food we consume. Indeed, we will never possess the range of climatic and geo-physical conditions necessary to do this. We could not also, in a free and democratic society, limit people’s choices of food to what we actually produce. This would not only be authoritarian, but would compromise our nutritional status.

In the circumstances, therefore, government policies must ensure that we produce the maximum of what we can produce with a reasonable level of efficiency, and what we cannot produce, we earn sufficient foreign exchange to purchase.

In some instances, it might suit the Government to support the production of some critical food items for strategic purposes and to meet other development objectives such as rural development. This is particularly poignant given the food-export bans that over 30 net food exporting countries, including Argentina, Egypt, Russia, and Vietnam, according to reports from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, instinctively imposed during the last world food crisis of 2007-2008.

STRUCTURE OF FOOD IMPORT BILL

What then is the structure of our food import bill? The single largest segment of our food import bill, some 30 per cent, comprises products of animal origin, that is:

n Beef – prime cuts, trimmings for the manufacturing of patties, offals, salted beef, and tinned corned beef;

n Pork – fresh cuts, pork bellies for production of bacon, corned porked in brine, pig trotters, and processed pork products;

n Poultry – chicken back and parts, chicken paste and turkey neck;p

n Mutton – fresh cuts and carcass;

n Fish – fresh fin fish, crustaceans and molluscs, tinned mackerel and sardines, mackerel in brine and salted fish;

n Dairy – milk powder, butter, lard, ice cream, and other dairy products;

 

The bulk of the above products in relation to value relates to protein consumed by the lower economic strata of our society, that is, beef offals (US$10.8 million), corned beef (US$8.2 million), beef trimmings for patties (US$7.8 million), salted fish (US$18.5 million), sardines (US$15.3 million), tinned mackerel (US$15.6 million) and chicken parts and back/turkey neck (US$19 million).

As a country, the bulk of the animal protein consumed by our poorest cohort is imported. Another huge trunk of the animal protein imported relates to prime cuts of beef and pork and a number of exotic species of fish going into the hotel/tourism sector.

To what extent can we replace these products of animal origin by local production? The beef and dairy industry in Jamaica is in absolutely no position to replace these imports in any appreciable way in the medium term.

Our cattle industry declined from 94,964 heads in 2007, according to STATIN’s Agricultural Census, to 64,504 heads in 2014, according to Ministry of Agriculture’s Cattle Census. Our prized breeds, beef and dairy, developed by the great Dr. T.P. Lecky, have not only deteriorated genetically, but their numbers are fast approaching the critical threshold required to sustain these breeds. The state of our pastures is way below the desired level, and during times of drought, which have become longer and more frequent, a bale of hay could buy a bag of gold!

On the dairy side, due to liberalisation in the early 1990s, ostensibly to help poor people, we flew the gate on cheap, subsidised milk powder from Europe, and in the process, almost decimated our local dairy industry.

The result: milk production fell from nearly 40 million litres per annum in the early 1990s, averaging 12 to 14 million litres in the last 10 years, with an attrition of over 500 farmers from the industry.

BEEF AND DAIRY PRODUCTION HEAVILY SUBSIDISED

The reality is that both beef and dairy production are heavily subsidised in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America. The scale of beef production in Argentina and Brazil is such that we could never compete effectively with beef from South America.

Any attempt to revive the beef industry in Jamaica can only happen with massive tariff support, which flies in the face of our World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments as well as support from the State in relation to irrigation for the overhaul of pastures and genetic improvements in our breeds, which could only happen in the long run.

We might have a better chance with dairy, but this would have to be done within a mother farm/satellite farm framework as being championed by Serge Island Farms. This would also require efficient pasture systems, highly productive cows, and a sustainable source of fodder (silage, hay, etc), during dry periods.

With the gradual withdrawal of subsidies in Europe, we have seen a steady rise in the price of milk powder, and this should provide some impetus for our local dairy sector. It is also the case that per capita consumption of milk by our children is way below World Health Organization’s daily recommended levels.

From the standpoint of securing the wellbeing of our children, the dairy sector deserves support. Any attempt to revive the beef and dairy industries must be balanced by mounting concerns internationally in academic, scientific, and environmental circles in relation to the huge carbon footprint of this industry. The production of a kilo of beef or a litre of milk utilises a disproportionately large amount of natural resources – land, water, and energy.

In the next few articles, we will examine the situation with the fishing, poultry, and pork industry as well as the possibilities of replacing some of our plant-based imports.

The series will conclude with examining the real potential of Jamaica’s agriculture, which is not so much import substitution, but reorienting agriculture for export growth.

- Donovan Stanberry, PhD, CD, JP, campus registrar, University of the West Indies, Mona. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com