PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Chargé d'af­faires at the US Em­bassy in Port of Spain, Philip Kern, hopes dis­cus­sions at the Caribbean Food In­vest­ment Round­table on Thurs­day will spur for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment to help im­prove food se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion.

The US Em­bassy fa­cil­i­tat­ed the dis­cus­sion, not­ing T&T had strug­gled with the re­duc­tion of its food im­port bill for years.

In an in­ter­view, Kern said, "Food se­cu­ri­ty is some­thing that af­fects us world­wide, but al­so very acute­ly here in the Caribbean. I've heard here that the to­tal food im­port bill for Trinidad and To­ba­go is in ex­cess of US$1 bil­lion a year, which is sig­nif­i­cant."

He ex­plained that the round­table fea­tured lo­cal ex­perts, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­ers, along with po­ten­tial in­vestors.

"What we do is high­light op­por­tu­ni­ties, and then in­vest­ment banks and in­vest­ment funds will make their own de­ci­sions about what we're try­ing to do is high­light the op­por­tu­ni­ties here," he said.

"I would say that it goes be­yond, though, just what we tra­di­tion­al­ly think as agri­cul­ture, as in grow­ing things in the dirt, farm­ers, plants grow­ing. But for us, the agri­cul­tur­al sys­tems, the whole food sys­tems, are big­ger than that be­cause there are trans­porta­tion sys­tems, there's cold stor­age, there's ports. It's how do we get food from here to there? How do we in­ter­con­nect mar­kets? And so that's a big piece of it," said the top US diplo­mat in T&T at this time.

Kern said the dis­cus­sions were held to ex­plore var­i­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties, in­clud­ing ex­pos­ing Amer­i­can in­vestors to av­enues they may not have con­sid­ered in the re­gion.

"I hope to walk away from this with some re­al de­liv­er­ables. What I know is that we're tar­get­ing in­vest­ments that are up to $100 mil­lion, and so that's sig­nif­i­cant. Where ex­act­ly those are de­ployed, I think, will de­pend on where they can see both quick and.sig­nif­i­cant re­sults," he said, as he ex­plained there were a lot of un­ex­plored op­tions which could bring in­vest­ment to T&T.

As a re­sult, ahead of the meet­ing, there was ex­cite­ment from both sides about the dis­cus­sion.

"I think that the gov­ern­ment, for one, is very ex­cit­ed about this. One of our goals as the Unit­ed States Em­bassy is to high­light the op­por­tu­ni­ties that ex­ist in Trinidad and To­ba­go. A lot of pri­vate cap­i­tal in the Unit­ed States is just un­aware of the op­por­tu­ni­ties. So we high­light. We do a lot of work, a lot of ad­vo­ca­cy, and say­ing US cap­i­tal, you should come and you should look at Trinidad, and I think this is the re­sult part of that re­sult," he said.

"I think the lo­cal stake­hold­ers are very ex­cit­ed to have ac­cess to US fund­ing, and the US fund­ing side is very ex­cit­ed to be able to ex­plore with those op­por­tu­ni­ties. So, from my per­spec­tive, right now this is a triple win, where lo­cal stake­hold­ers get to show­case the op­por­tu­ni­ties. The gov­ern­ment gets to high­light their pri­or­i­ties, and US cap­i­tal gets to ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties," Kern said.

How­ev­er, he stressed that the round­table was not sim­ply about pour­ing mon­ey in­to a sec­tor, but ide­al­ly iden­ti­fy­ing ar­eas that would aid with food se­cu­ri­ty and the re­duc­tion of the food im­port bill.

Kern said for the im­pact of this pri­vate cap­i­tal de­ploy­ment to be prop­er­ly max­imised, in­vest­ment frame­works must look be­yond pri­ma­ry field pro­duc­tion to in­clude the broad­er phys­i­cal and lo­gis­ti­cal mech­a­nisms re­quired for re­gion­al trade.

"So I think that it would be a mis­take to just look at it as pure­ly in­vest­ment in­to farm­ing, al­though that is an im­por­tant part of it, but it's think­ing big­ger. How do we move food less ex­pen­sive­ly, and then and there­by re­duce food costs? How do we con­nect mar­kets that might not be cor­rect­ly con­nect­ed? How do we build up the in­fra­struc­ture for those things to hap­pen? I think those are some of the re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing top­ics that we'll see dis­cussed to­day."

Strate­gic de­vel­op­ment of in­fra­struc­ture had been list­ed by lead agri­cul­ture and busi­ness con­sul­tant Riyadh Mo­hammed as an im­per­a­tive for the agri­cul­ture sec­tor ahead of next week’s bud­get.

Mo­hammed said then, "Fish­eries and aqua­cul­ture can make a larg­er con­tri­bu­tion to do­mes­tic food se­cu­ri­ty if sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture is im­proved. Land­ing sites need re­li­able ice, cold stor­age, clean wa­ter, hy­gien­ic han­dling ar­eas and bet­ter trans­port links. Aqua­cul­ture de­vel­op­ment re­quires de­pend­able hatch­ery sup­ply, af­ford­able feed, tech­ni­cal sup­port, wa­ter-qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing and vi­able mar­ket chan­nels. Re­duced spoilage, safer seafood and in­creased do­mes­tic fish sup­ply would be prac­ti­cal out­comes."

The con­sul­tant had al­so added, "Post-har­vest han­dling and lo­gis­tics re­main ma­jor in­vest­ment pri­or­i­ties. Ag­gre­ga­tion cen­tres, pack­hous­es, cold rooms, re­frig­er­at­ed trans­porta­tion, stan­dard­ised crates, grad­ing equip­ment and mar­ket-in­for­ma­tion sys­tems can re­duce food waste and im­prove the qual­i­ty of pro­duce reach­ing su­per­mar­kets, restau­rants, proces­sors and con­sumers. These in­vest­ments would al­low farm­ers to sup­ply larg­er buy­ers more con­sis­tent­ly and would help proces­sors ob­tain the de­pend­able vol­umes re­quired for com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion."

Kern, how­ev­er, felt the de­vel­op­ment of these ideas would de­pend on the men­tal­i­ty of those in­volved.

"It's re­al­ly go­ing to de­pend on where are the gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ties, where are the pri­vate cap­i­tal pri­or­i­ties, and what do the lo­gis­tics sys­tems look like. I think that what we're re­al­ly look­ing to do is iden­ti­fy where are the wins that that we can de­liv­er in the short term. "

He point­ed out that T&T's co­coa prod­uct was one such ex­am­ple of a niche mar­ket that could be ex­plored by in­vestors. How­ev­er, he not­ed that ex­pan­sion of that in­dus­try would not nec­es­sar­i­ly ad­dress needs with re­gard to food se­cu­ri­ty.

"I think the sky is the lim­it. You know, there are some very es­tab­lished in­dus­tries here. You know, I think about co­coa for one, where there's a re­al unique op­por­tu­ni­ty here. But co­coa is al­so not a food sta­ple. It's not some­thing that's go­ing to put the calo­ries in­to peo­ple to sus­tain a pop­u­la­tion. So I think what we are en­cour­ag­ing every­one that we have in­vit­ed to­day is to think broad­ly on what are some of the niche ones that are well es­tab­lished, but al­so where the needs."