Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 22, 2017 APNU Column, Features / Columnists
(Excerpts from an address by HE President David Granger on World Food Day, October 16, 2017)
The right to food is a basic human right. Guyana recognized this right from the start. This country became a republic on 23rd February 1970 and issued an iconic, commemorative coin known, popularly, as the ‘Cuffy Dollar.’ The coin was
inscribed with the words – “Food for All.”
I celebrate ‘World Food Day’ today, forty-seven years later and re-echo the same call – “Food for All.” World Food Day is an opportunity to show our commitment to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 – that is, to achieve ‘Zero Hunger’ by 2030.
Zero hunger aims at ensuring that mothers are well-nourished; they can then have healthier babies with stronger immune systems; healthier children can help to build a healthier world for everyone.
The Upper Demerara-Berbice Region is a most appropriate place to celebrate this international festival this year. This 17,000 km² Region is larger than Jamaica and represents 12 per cent of our national territory.
The Region bestrides Guyana’s main rivers – Demerara, Berbice and Essequibo – and shares borders with seven other administrative regions. The Region has a varied landscape of grasslands, large tracts of arable land and rainforests and can become a vital element in national and regional food security.
The Region can become a farmyard for agricultural production, diversification and agro-industrialisation. It can help this country to realise its potential to provide ‘food for all’ in this country and the Caribbean Community.
Guyana is committed to taking purposeful action to guarantee food security. ‘Food security’ is about a situation in which:
“… all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access
to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary
needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”
Food security means that food must be available in sufficient quantities; that it must be accessible by all; and that it must be acceptable in terms of satisfying the dietary, nutritional and health needs of all.
FOOD SECURITY
The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates that 815 million persons in the world are chronically undernourished; that one in every nine persons in the world does not have sufficient food to live an active life.
The world is also uncertain about its ability to satisfy the future food needs of its growing population. It is estimated that it will need to increase food production by 70 per cent to feed the additional two billion persons who will be added to the population by 2050. This will mean that developing countries will need to double their food production as at 2007 levels.
Food security in the Caribbean (excluding Guyana) is threatened not so much by the non-availability of food as it is by undernourishment and the severe impact of environmental hazards on agricultural production.
The 2017 hurricane season has severely damaged the agricultural sectors in some Eastern Caribbean islands, creating disruptions to those countries’ food systems. They retarded regional agriculture which was already restricted by reduced levels of investment and crop yields, increased input costs and macroeconomic constraints.
Guyana enjoys a measure of food security in meat, rice, root tubers and vegetables. Access to food, however, remains uneven with pockets of extreme poverty, particularly in some hinterland communities. The prevalence of undernourishment stood at 8.5 per cent of the population in 2016. Undernourishment in the Caribbean was 18.3 per cent in 2017.
Guyana can ensure improved access to nutritional food for its population, but it must address the deficiencies in national food security to take its place as a provider of ‘food for all’ for the country and the Caribbean.
Food security is threatened, also, by the phenomenon of climate change. Extreme weather – the cycle of droughts and floods, the overtopping of the seawalls and swollen rivers – have resulted in widespread economic losses in the agricultural sector.
The agriculture sector, owing to its dependence on environmental conditions, makes it susceptible to the detrimental effects of extreme weather. Climate change can affect food production by:
– accelerating the spread of pests and plant diseases;
– altering soil fertility and increasing soil erosion; and
– affecting plant pollination and the stability of fishing grounds.
The agriculture sector must be protected from the adverse effects of climate change. It must be made more resilient if it is to become a bastion of national and regional food security.
REGIONAL FOOD SECURITY
Guyana, as a member of Caribbean Community, is committed to the establishment of a Caribbean Single Market and Economy. This country, in this regard, is unreservedly committed to advancing the principles and policies published in:
– Caribbean Community Agricultural Policy (2011);
– CARICOM Agribusiness Development Strategy of 2012;
– CARICOM Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy (2010), and Action Plan (2011); and the
– Liliendaal Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security of 2009.
The Caribbean Community, taken as a whole, has the land, labour, market and money to provide ‘food for all’ of its citizens. The states of the Caribbean Community, taken together, exceed the Kingdom of Sweden which is over 450,000 km² in land area.
The Caribbean Community can ensure greater food security by helping to reduce its mammoth food import bill of more than US$4 billion per year. The Caribbean Community’s Agricultural Policy (CAP) which proposes measures to “improve the resilience of the Region’s national communities and households to natural and socio–economic crises” – one which can ensure regional food security is established on a sturdy tripod:
· Investment: The Caribbean Community must heed CAP’s calls for increased investment in the agri-food sector. Increased investment can expand production in existing and neglected cultivation areas along our coastland which remains the bedrock of this country’s agricultural production.
The region must attract increased international investment to promote inland agriculture in order to reduce the sector’s vulnerability to coastal climate-related shocks and to improve food security and employment.
Agricultural sectors tend to be concentrated near to the coast which makes them vulnerable to rising sea levels and extreme weather. Coastal agriculture must be made more resilient and competitive through investments in climate adaptation infrastructure such as improved sea defences and improved drainage and irrigation and weather forecasting systems.
· Innovation: The Caribbean Community must ensure the development of a more competitive and diversified agricultural sector. The CAP calls for “adapting, developing and applying innovation and technologies across value chains.”
Innovation in agriculture can be promoted through diversification, value–added production and by shifting to the production increasingly towards satisfying export demand. Investments must be made in new technologies, including high-yielding crop varieties, aimed at improving yields and reducing costs.
· Agro-industry: Agro-industry, that is the production, processing and packaging of food, using modern equipment and methods on a large-scale – is a key element of the strategy to ensure food security. It does so by reducing food imports thereby making more local food available in processed form.
Agro-processing adds value to food production. It enhances food security by stimulating increased demand for food production, by reducing crop losses resulting from spoilage and by diminishing food scarcity.
Agro-processing advances food security by raising farmers’ incomes, reducing poverty and increasing employment. Agro-processing enables countries to increase food exports while reducing market uncertainties associated with primary commodities.
The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations has noted that urban consumers who account for 70 per cent of global food consumption are shifting towards greater use of higher value dairy products, eggs, fish, fruits, meat, processed foods and vegetables.
Guyana, also, must shift its production patterns to satisfy market demand. This country must align its agricultural production to market demands in local, national, regional and international markets.
This country’s agricultural sector will remain a mainstay of our economy. It is through increased investment, innovation and intensification of agro-industrial development that the agricultural sector will guarantee national and regional food security.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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