Caribbean uni­ver­si­ties from Guyana and Trinidad and To­ba­go, with fac­ul­ties re­spon­si­ble for agri­cul­ture and or food, have agreed to part­ner with Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­tries to sup­port re­duc­tions in the re­gion’s food im­port bill by 25 per cent by 2025.

The An­ton de Kom Uni­ver­si­ty of Suri­name is due to join the ini­tia­tive.

CARI­COM lead­ers have made the re­duc­tion in the food im­port bill, es­ti­mat­ed at bil­lions of US dol­lars, a ma­jor pri­or­i­ty and the ini­tia­tive is be­ing led by Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali, who has lead re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Agri­cul­ture in the qua­si CARI­COM cab­i­net.

Dur­ing a vir­tu­al meet­ing host­ed by the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture of the St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) the uni­ver­si­ties not­ed that re­gion­al an­nu­al food im­ports amount­ed to US $4.3 bil­lion, for the pe­ri­od 2018-2020, ex­clud­ing Haiti.

They not­ed that de­spite the fact that the Min­is­te­r­i­al Task Force at its re­cent meet­ing had re­port­ed that the re­gion had “met 57 per cent of the 25 per cent tar­get­ed re­duc­tion in food im­ports”, sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts re­main.

They not­ed fur­ther that, with their col­lec­tive hu­man cap­i­tal and sources of in­no­va­tion and hubs for tech­no­log­i­cal and knowl­edge de­vel­op­ment, a very pow­er­ful con­tri­bu­tion can be ex­pect­ed.

The uni­ver­si­ties have in­vit­ed the CARI­COM Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CP­SO) that was rep­re­sent­ed at the vir­tu­al meet­ing by Ru­el Ed­wards, Se­nior Tech­ni­cal Ex­pert, to ex­plain the de­tails of the “25 by 2025 Ini­tia­tive” par­tic­u­lar­ly iden­ti­fy­ing the pri­ori­tised com­mod­i­ty groups and progress to date.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, sev­en com­mod­i­ty groups were de­scribed: ce­re­als and sta­ples; meat prod­ucts; ed­i­ble veg­eta­bles, fruits and nuts; milk and cream; bev­er­ages; fish prod­ucts and crus­taceans; and hon­ey as al­so the ini­ti­a­tion of the de­tailed prepa­ra­tion of busi­ness in­vest­ment cas­es for the 19 com­modi­ties with­in the groups to sup­port po­ten­tial in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties ap­prox­i­mat­ing US$1.17 bil­lion.”

Deans, Dr Lawrence Lewis, Pro­fes­sor Mar­lon Knight and Pro­fes­sor Mark Wud­di­vi­ra rep­re­sent­ing the Uni­ver­si­ties of Guyana, Trinidad and To­ba­go and UWI, re­spec­tive­ly, de­scribed the over­whelm­ing re­search, in­no­va­tion and teach­ing prod­ucts be­ing con­duct­ed by each of their in­sti­tu­tions and recog­nised the im­mense ben­e­fits to be ob­tained for them­selves, CP­SO and the re­gion from their clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion.

For­mer re­gion­al di­rec­tor of Op­er­a­tions, Caribbean for In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA) and the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (CAR­DI), Dr Ar­ling­ton Ches­ney, who served as the lead dis­cus­sant, said the meet­ings will con­tin­ue reg­u­lar­ly to fa­cil­i­tate their mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the achieve­ment of the 25×2025 Ini­tia­tive and the Uni­ver­si­ties of Ba­hamas and Be­lize will be in­vit­ed by UWI to join the group.

In ad­di­tion, the group in­tends to share a list­ing of their projects, es­pe­cial­ly in the ar­eas of pro­tect­ed agri­cul­ture, corn, roots and tu­bers and dairy: com­modi­ties in which at least two uni­ver­si­ties are con­duct­ing re­search and /or de­vel­op­men­tal ac­tiv­i­ties and which are amongst the 19 iden­ti­fied in the 25×2025 Ini­tia­tive.

They will al­so share a list­ing of their staff and their in­di­vid­ual skill set to en­able the de­vel­op­ment of tech­ni­cal work­ing sub­groups and work to de­vel­op a proac­tive pub­lic re­la­tions pro­gramme.

Ches­ney said al­so the uni­ver­si­ties in­tend to pri­ori­tise the com­modi­ties for which busi­ness in­vest­ment cas­es would be pre­pared to de­vel­op bank­able and/or de­vel­op­men­tal projects for im­ple­men­ta­tion by agen­cies, in­clud­ing the uni­ver­si­ties.

He said a spe­cif­ic ex­am­ple be­ing the pro­tect­ed agri­cul­ture project ap­proved by re­gion­al lead­ers and to de­ter­mine the re­sources nec­es­sary to de­vel­op the se­lect­ed busi­ness in­vest­ment cas­es with­in an agreed sched­ule.

They have al­so agreed to ini­ti­ate dis­cus­sions lead­ing to com­ple­tion of a “work­ing” mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) by June this year.