Alongside Ministers of Agriculture of the Caribbean, IICA reports on its work to strengthen food security and agricultural resilience in the region

San Jose, 19 July 2023 (IICA) - Ministers of Agriculture of the Caribbean participated in a working meeting on Tuesday with the Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Manuel Otero, with a view to increasing the region’s agricultural activity and production, reducing its heavy dependence on food imports, and addressing climate change.
 
At IICA Headquarters in San Jose, Manuel Otero, Director General of the Institute, and other officials of the hemispheric agency specializing in agricultural and rural development indicated that Caribbean countries are working to overcome multiple production challenges in the region. They emphasized the Institute’s commitment to assisting countries in implementing the best scientific and technological tools to reduce food insecurity and mitigate the climate crisis.
 
The technical cooperation projects that IICA is implementing in the Caribbean, an extremely vulnerable region, have allowed for improving the productivity of small-scale farmers, increasing resilience to extreme climate events, fostering the use of new technologies, and identifying investment opportunities, among other results.
 
High-level government officials, in turn, recognized IICA’s work and its results at the meeting, which was attended by the ministers of Agriculture of Antigua and Barbuda, Everly Greene; Barbados, Indar Weir; Grenada, Adrian Thomas; Guyana, Zulfikar Mustapha; Haiti, Charlot Bredy; Jamaica, Floyd Green; St. Kitts and Nevis, Samal Mojah Duggins; St. Lucia, Alfred Prospere; St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Saboto Caesar; Trinidad and Tobago, Avinash Singh and the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture of The Bahamas, David Cates,
 
Joaquín Arias, Coordinator of IICA’s Public Policy Observatory for Agrifood Systems (OPSAa), and Curt Delice, IICA Special Affairs Coordinator for the Caribbean Region and the Institute’s Representative in Suriname, delivered extensive and detailed presentations on the region’s opportunities and challenges and the results achieved by IICA projects in 2022.
 
Fourteen of IICA’s 34 Member States are Caribbean nations, each of which has an IICA office.
 
Delice pointed out that Caribbean nations are, on the one hand, very susceptible to external shocks due to the openness of their economies, as well as extremely vulnerable to natural disasters, which have become more frequent and severe as a result of climate change.
 
“We recognize the fact that we cannot work in isolation, but must do so through technical cooperation agreements”, he added, before citing the meetings that IICA had facilitated with international financial organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank, with a view to strengthening agricultural activities and fostering resilience.
 
IICA implemented programs to foster women’s empowerment, gender equity and the introduction of digital agriculture in the Caribbean, with a view to increasing production efficiency.
 
Among the various meetings that IICA supported to drive investment in the sector and agricultural trade was the Forum and Exhibition carried out in 2022 in Georgetown, Guyana, where companies advertised their products and transactions exceeded USD 1 million.
 
Delice listed the projects carried out by IICA on issues such as labeling, food health and safety, phytosanitary measures and combating pests and diseases, as well as the swine fever outbreak detected in 2021 in Caribbean countries.
 
“Through the Living Soils of the Americas Program, we have fostered efforts to restore soil health in order to safeguard food and nutritional security. We have also launched programs to strengthen the resilience of marine and coastal ecosystems, make better use of water and plant improved pastures”.
 
A key topic has been capacity building, which has enabled 4,247 farmers, youth and agroprocessors to receive training through various programs related to agriculture and agribusiness.
 
IICA is also developing programs to increase the use of digital technologies and foster synergies between agriculture and tourism, the main economic activity in most Caribbean countries, through agrotourism.
 
The agriculture sector’s resilience
 
Caribbean agriculture represents 5.9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the region, where the sector’s total exports and imports in 2022 totaled USD 4.26 billion and USD 10.1 billion, respectively, revealed Joaquín Arias.
 
He highlighted the fact that, despite a confluence of crises, which caused the global and regional GDPs to plunge, agrifood systems in general have proven to be very resilient and several Caribbean countries have demonstrated the strength of their agricultural chains.
 
He also pointed out that there are valuable opportunities to enhance the agriculture sector’s contribution to the region’s economic development through scientific collaboration, technological development and capacity-building practices.
 
In this regard, Arias considered that trade promotion offers a very positive outlook for the Caribbean. He also underscored the region’s relative levels of investment in agriculture. “We always say that there is little investment in agriculture, but the situation is different in the Caribbean. In Latin America today, 1.5% of what is generated is spent on agriculture, compared to 2.5% in the Caribbean, which  is much higher”, he remarked.
 
However, the scenario does present some challenges. “We must recognize the fact that the pandemic has pushed many people into poverty and hunger, specifically 7.7% of people in Latin America and more than double that percentage in the Caribbean: 16%”, he said.
 
According to data from OPSAa, a digital platform launched by IICA in 2022 to assist countries in overcoming a period of uncertainty and instability, 51% of people lack access to healthy diets in the Caribbean, which is more than double the figure for Latin America.
 
“Hunger is not necessarily solved by agrifood systems; hunger is a symptom of poverty”, he warned. “The agrifood sector’s performance in supplying food and generating employment and income is important, but not sufficient to solve problems in the region”, he added.
 
The diversification of agricultural production affords a valuable opportunity for Caribbean countries.
 
“We have the possibility of diversifying and further transforming production. In this regard, the bioeconomy has the best prospects, offering highly valuable biotechnology products, natural ingredients, biofertilizers, biofuels and biocosmetics.  If we take into account the region’s vast biodiversity and the availability of biomass, business opportunities in the field are promising”, said Arias.
 
Lastly, the IICA specialist referred to the need to increase intraregional trade and pointed out that only 7.1% of Latin America’s food exports are sent to the Caribbean. Therefore, there is a wide margin for growth if we capitalize on trade agreements and lower trade costs”. 

More information:
Institutional Communication Division.
comunicacion.institucional@iica.int