Wesley Gibbings
A very important note was struck on these op-ed pages on Monday by well-known T&T plant pathologist/climate change expert, Steve Maximay, who has been among the more tireless campaigners for Caribbean food and nutrition self-sufficiency.
In his missive, the Grenada-based scientist/development busybody reminded us of his “core beliefs,” which make a distinction between routinised reference to “food security” and the more important goal of “nutrition security.”
In other words: a goal not only to fill our bellies, but to make sure that whatever we’re feeding ourselves is wholesome and healthy.
“I am certainly not interested in celebrating a reduction in our regional food import bill if that bill still includes carbonated beverages and nutritionally empty calories,” he insists.
Think of the non-communicable diseases – cardiovascular disease (including hypertension) and diabetes.
The first time I was forced to consider the important difference - having long latched on to the doctrine of self-sufficiency in food production purely to counter rising food import bills while staving off hunger - was through the counsel of retired CARDI executive director, Dr Arlington Chesney, nearly 20 years ago.
Regional politicians had by then adopted the sovereignty dictum in response to growing concern that in the event of a cataclysmic global event—A pandemic? War? —we would be left at the mercy of underdeveloped capacity to meet domestic food demand. Plus, there was the persistence of foreign currency outflows during increasingly difficult economic times.
Dr Chesney reminded us, even back then, that the concept of “food sovereignty” had also grown to include an ability to purchase food not grown domestically. This was so as there were few Caribbean countries possessing the capacity to produce all they required—including those commodities for which we have acquired a demanding, compulsive taste.
Take doubles, to cite one example. Yes, the “dressings” are all largely indigenous concoctions, but the main ingredients, namely wheat flour and channa (chickpeas) are not produced in T&T.
So, there should be allowance for “tastes” and things we claim to be ours—but not to the extent that undermines a valid concern about the large sums of money expended every year to import the things we eat and drink.
Now unofficially branded as “25-by-2030,” Caricom’s 25‑by‑2025 (25% reduction in food imports by the year 2025) target was not met by a single member state, mainly because of domestic and imported needs and appetites.
The tourism-dependent countries tell a huge part of the latter tale. But it’s not the entire story.
Here in T&T, where our food import bill is in the vicinity of TT$7.5 billion annually (calculate 25% of that), there are some difficult questions to answer regarding expenditure on imported food and the extent to which, as Maximay reminds us, we are not simply aiming at satisfying caloric intake.
His concern is, therefore, as much focused on “the food import bill” as it is on the achievement of “nutrition security” as a strategy to counter the scourge of poor health and all its attendant implications for productivity, social costs, and reduction in the quality of life.
Regionwide, the outlook is not much more promising. The effort to reduce/substitute reliance on imports such as poultry and other meats, wheat flour, rice, soya and other commodities can benefit from greater pooling of resources and redirecting of productive efforts in the food sector.
The Caricom Agri-Food Systems Strategy was designed specifically to address growing demand for these commodities, and to meaningfully reduce the current annual bill of US$6 billion.
It is nothing new that Caricom nations can benefit immeasurably from intra-regional collaboration/rationalising by mutual consent to address the difficulty we have with expenditure on extra-regional food imports. Import substitution is an age-old mantra. Nutrition security is not.
In an ideal world, we would have all been trading in our own currency (the single economy component of the CSME) and making better use of single market conditions to feed each other. Channa from Belize. And Guyana could have also supplied us with wheat flour had its trial runs been successful. Hopefully, they have not given up completely.
Instead, there prevails a foolish belief in a destiny that denies important building blocks of the integration movement.
On the particular question of food and nutrition security, it helps that important producers such as Guyana, Suriname and Belize are members of the family —though their own 25-by-2025 aspirations were unsuccessful.
But there is a structure and a rational pathway to collective success that should not be abandoned.
Maximay’s alert is worth heeding as a warning against the temptation to ignore healthy bodies in exchange for full but unwell bellies.
