KINGSTON, Jamaica: On June 2 Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago will be the meeting point of Heads of State, Agriculture and Finance Ministers of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). They will be joined by bilateral, multilateral, and regional donors for a special conference aimed at resuscitating financial flows and boosting technical support for diversified agricultural initiatives.
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Guyana's President Bharrat
Jagdeo. AFP PHOTO |
Guyana’s President and lead CARICOM Head of State for Agriculture Bharrat Jagdeo’s project: The Jagdeo Initiative ‘Strengthening Agriculture for Sustainable Development’ will form the basis of talks during the meeting.
The Head of State at the 21st CARICOM Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) meeting on February 7 at the CARICOM Secretariat, maintained that even with threats to the sector and the emergence of innovative foreign exchange attractive sectors as tourism and services, agriculture still has and will always play a decisive role in the Region’s prosperity.
He told agriculture stakeholders at that meeting, “Agriculture has always been an important source of export earnings, employment, eradication of poverty, rural development and has always played a supportive role in the services sector. Too often in our Region, I hear comments that agriculture has no role to play and services would be the thing of the future.”
For the role of the agriculture sector to be stabilised and concretised, President Jagdeo said Heads of State need to first recognise the importance of the sector and give impetus to its development through implementing special initiatives.
Secretary General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) Dr. Jacques Diouf supported Jagdeo’s call for more action at the level of the Heads.
At the 18th Inter-Sessional Meeting held in Kingstown, St Vincent and the Grenadines in February following the special COTED meeting, Heads of the Region agreed to President Jagdeo spearheading the exercise.
The conference is expected to yield financial and technical support for the agricultural thematic areas and the supporting projects.
On the Conference’s agenda for discussion will be major challenges facing the Region’s agriculture sector which include: inadequate infrastructural development, technology transfer and food security and the need for increased investment in the sector to enable its expansion and diversification towards sustainability and international competitiveness.
The conference is being held against the background of the launch of the CARICOM Single Market (CSM), the imminent establishment of a framework policy for the Single Economy in 2008, and eroding preferential access for traditional agriculture crops.
Potential donors will also be targeted at the Conference to widen the financial support base of the Region’s agriculture. A Conference Secretariat is based at the CARICOM Secretariat in Georgetown
With a number of critical crops of the Region’s countries under threat by Europe’s Reform of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), CARICOM member States see agricultural diversification as the way forward for sustaining agriculture.
Sugar and banana have been hard hit by the cut in preferential prices offered and have left countries which traditionally depended on such products for foreign exchange earnings in dire circumstances. Some have abandoned sugar altogether like St. Kitts and Nevis and some like Guyana are seeking to diversify the industry to maintain its economic role.
At its core, the Regional Transformation Programme for Agriculture (RTPA) is expected to transform the agricultural sector to be internationally competitive. The Jagdeo Initiative forms a critical tenet of the RTPA’s holistic approach.
The initiative which has garnered regional support as a sure way of transforming the state of the agriculture sector, seeks to alleviate binding constraints to the development of the sector and create the enabling environment to encourage a revival of investment in agriculture facilitating the transformation process.
The Jagdeo Initiative strategically coupled with RTPA and other CARICOM Agriculture strategies, is expected to create an enabling investment and production environment, effective technology development and transfer; develop specific commodities and enterprises; increased food security and sustainable development. | 
