Climate change threatens Jamaica’s food security

A recent UN report has raised serious concerns about food security in Jamaica, linking climate change and extreme weather to increasing food shortages. Data shows that 55% of Jamaicans faced moderate to severe food insecurity between 2021 and 2023, with 26.6% experiencing severe shortages. Rising temperatures, droughts, and unpredictable weather continue to affect local food production, while Jamaica’s heavy reliance on imported food worsens the crisis.

Food and the industrial policy

Jamaica Gleaner/4 Feb 2025

UNLESS THEY got their data badly twisted, the recent report by a group of UN agencies on food security in Latin America and the Caribbean should give Jamaica pause on any overexuberant celebration of the island’s latest unemployment statistics.

In fact, both sets of statistics, this newspaper believes, provide additional evidence of the need for a deep conversation on crafting an industrial policy to help lift Jamaica sharply up the economic food chain from an economy that is now largely anchored in low wages, low technology, low value-added, low productivity and, thus, low growth.

Indeed, this debate would be consistent with Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ declaration late last year of his administration’s “pivot” from its previous concentration on macroeconomic stability to a drive for greater GDP output.

To be clear, The Gleaner fully welcomes last month’s report by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) for the 2024 fourth quarter, showing that the island’s unemployment rate had dropped by a further one-tenth of a percentage point to 3.5 per cent. This is the latest in a series of ‘historic lows’ in modern Jamaica’s unemployment figure since the Government first celebrated that milestone in August 2023, when the jobless rate fell to 4.5 per cent. That more people have jobs and are paid is good.

But fast on the heels of STATIN’S data has come the 2024 Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition for Latin America and the Caribbean. It was produced by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in conjunction with the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the World Food Programme, and the UN’S children’s organisation, UNICEF.

A major focus of the report is how climate change and extreme weather are affecting global food and nutrition security and the risks posed to this region, the one with the greatest level of danger from variable climate events after Asia.

DISTURBING

With respect to Jamaica, it provides this disturbing bit of data: for the 2021-2023 period, 55 per cent of Jamaicans faced moderate to severe food insecurity. That is, they, either consistently or periodically lacked access to safe and nutritious food for a healthy life. For 26.6 per cent of the population, food insecurity was severe.

Comparatively, the island’s moderate to severe food insecurity was 48.3 per cent, 45.8 per cent, and 50.3 per cent, respectively, for the 2014-16, 2017-19, and 2018-21 periods.

Further, food insecurity in Jamaica for the 202123 period was 5.3 percentage points above the Caribbean average and 24.3 percentage points higher above Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole.

Expressed differently, PAHO and the other UN agencies estimated that 1.6 million Jamaicans faced some level of food insecurity, which contributed to the 33.8 per cent of adults who the report found in 2022 to be obese and the approximately one-fifth of women between 15 and 49 years old who were anaemic. Additionally, 6.5 per cent of children under five were stunted and 5.7 per cent overweight.

In the face of the raw unemployment figure, these numbers appear questionable. With a labour force near full employment, Jamaicans should not be food or nutrition insecure.

Perhaps. Until, maybe, the labour market numbers, and their broader circumstances, are interrogated further.

UNEMPLOYMENT

For instance, when the official unemployment level is added to the involuntary part-time workers (the time-related underemployed in the jargon of the labour market experts), the combined unemployment rate is 5.4 per cent. It moves to 6.9 per cent when people who are discouraged and have stopped looking for work are added to that data for a composite number.

While there is some overlap in the categories, there is also the fact that among the nearly 688,000 people outside the labour force are 108,000 young people who are neither in jobs nor in education or training institutions.

But insofar as these observations offer an explanation, they are, in this newspaper’s view, insufficient. A suite of other factors, including the quality of the labour force, and its impact on jobs and productivity, are also at play.

For instance, while Jamaica’s unemployment rate has fallen dramatically in recent years (starting before the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic), economic growth has been, at best, slow. Indeed, it was projected to decline by as much as two per cent in 2024.

In other words, labour productivity is weak, with an annual average decline of 0.6 per cent over several decades. Which suggests, among other things, relatively low levels of technology usage in the broader economy. One outcome: low wages. That negatively impacts people’s capacity to spend and consume, including nutritious food.

All of this is further complicated by Jamaica’s technology-deficient, labour-intensive, small-acreage, low-yield farming sector that lends to an annual food import bill of US$1.4 billion; which must be part of the discourse on food security.

As Prime Minister Holness acknowledged, while a necessary component, macroeconomic stability is of itself insufficient to ignite robust and sustained growth.

Jamaica’s condition demands a coherent, and cohesive, multisectoral industrial policy to power the transformation. This includes a coordinated lifting of education and training standards, investment in innovation, government policies to incentives production and risk-taking, and when required, picking winners.

This is not an approach that governments can easily assume on their own. It requires a broad-based partnership – a national consensus that involves the political Opposition, the private sector, labour, and civil society. The Government, however, has to lead.

 

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