The pan­dem­ic, glob­al sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions and the Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict was the se­quence of events that com­bined to dri­ve up in­fla­tion around the world. These un­fold­ing, far-reach­ing oc­cur­rences can ag­gra­vate T&T’s ten­u­ous state of food se­cu­ri­ty.

Con­sumers can no longer ig­nore the fact that the in­crease in the price of flour that took ef­fect yes­ter­day—the sec­ond in the space of six months—is part of a trend of high­er food prices that could eas­i­ly over­whelm economies like ours in the com­ing weeks and months. For the chal­lenges ahead, T&T needs to be bet­ter pre­pared.

This coun­try did not have to wait for an an­nounce­ment from Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) to un­der­stand the se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion with food prices that is loom­ing. There was al­ways the prospect of reper­cus­sions from the Rus­sia-Ukraine war be­cause those na­tions to­geth­er sup­ply more than a quar­ter of the world’s wheat. Since the start of that con­flict, ex­perts had been warn­ing that it could fu­el high­er food prices, as in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ments of wheat have been ham­pered, spurring short­ages just as sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions have been dri­ving up food prices.

Wheat prices rose 40 per cent be­tween Feb­ru­ary and April and there could be a de­cline in glob­al pro­duc­tion over the next few months.

This coun­try is not shield­ed from these de­vel­op­ments be­cause of our heavy re­liance on food im­ports, in­clud­ing ce­re­al like wheat. Sad­dled as this coun­try has been for years with an an­nu­al food im­port bill of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5 bil­lion, there is a par­tic­u­lar vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to these types of ex­ter­nal shocks.

In ad­di­tion, agri­cul­ture here is most­ly small-scale, em­ploy­ing less than three per cent of the pop­u­la­tion and con­tribut­ing less than one per cent to GDP, so this coun­try can­not pro­duce enough food to feed our pop­u­la­tion.

For that rea­son, pri­or­i­ty is­sues in the com­ing months should in­clude a con­cert­ed ef­fort to re­duce the food im­port bill and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of poli­cies to en­sure food se­cu­ri­ty and boost agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, all with the aim of es­tab­lish­ing a re­silient food sys­tem.

Among oth­er things, there is a need for ­in­vest­ments in cli­mate-smart agri­cul­ture and tech­nol­o­gy such as con­trolled en­vi­ron­men­tal sys­tems, hy­dro­pon­ics and oth­er sys­tems to en­sure ad­e­quate crop yields for lo­cal pro­duc­tion, as well as for ex­port.

This in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture and tech­nol­o­gy is al­so need­ed to build re­silience to cli­mate change, as cur­rent geo-po­lit­i­cal up­heavals are not the on­ly per­ils fac­ing T&T.

In terms of the lo­cal food sup­ply, all it takes is heavy rain over short pe­ri­ods in flood-prone parts of the coun­try—many of which are al­so ar­eas of sig­nif­i­cant food crop pro­duc­tion—to trig­ger short­ages and high­er prices.

Less ap­par­ent but al­so of con­cern is the ex­tent to which chang­ing weath­er pat­terns are al­so pos­ing prob­lems in the fish­eries sec­tor. Glob­al warm­ing and ris­ing sea lev­els are caus­ing coastal ero­sion, which is threat­en­ing fish­eries in­fra­struc­ture and the liveli­hoods of fish­er­folk.

All the talk about agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment must now be trans­lat­ed in­to de­ci­sive ac­tion aimed at staving off food in­se­cu­ri­ty, which might be clos­er than ex­pect­ed if things stay as they are.