In Feb­ru­ary, Cari­com an­nounced a plan to re­duce food im­ports across the re­gion through the Re­gion­al Food Pro­duc­tion and Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty To­wards a Sus­tain­able Im­port Re­place­ment Pro­gramme: 25% by 2025 Re­duc­tion in the Re­gion­al Food Bill.

The ini­tia­tive is a bid to ad­dress the re­gion’s Food Im­port Bill which Cari­com said was quick­ly mov­ing to­wards US$5 bil­lion and is sub­stan­tial when viewed in the con­text of the sizes of the economies in the re­gion and thus presents food se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er chal­lenges to re­gion­al economies.

As a re­sult, the Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com have com­mit­ted to re­duc­ing the re­gion’s large food im­port bill by 25% by 2025.

This is to be done via the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Cari­com Agri-Food Sys­tems Strat­e­gy in the mem­ber states, which is ex­pect­ed to help achieve this tar­get, by giv­ing spe­cial at­ten­tion to pri­or­i­ty crops and prod­ucts such as poul­try, corn, soya, meat (Goat, Sheep, Beef), rice and niche veg­eta­bles which are high­ly im­port­ed prod­ucts in the re­gion.

The bill has in­formed the ap­proach of lead­ers over the past few months as gov­ern­ments around the Caribbean placed fur­ther em­pha­sis on agri­cul­ture, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic great­ly ex­posed the over-re­liance on im­ports across the re­gion.

In a 79-page doc­u­ment­ing the ap­proach, it aid, “Agri­cul­ture re­mains a ma­jor pil­lar of Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) Mem­ber States economies and has the po­ten­tial to build eco­nom­ic re­silience and dri­ve in­clu­sive so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of the Re­gion, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the cur­rent chal­lenges be­ing faced as a re­sult of the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic.”

The dri­ve is seen as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to bol­ster sev­er­al ar­eas af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic as the re­port not­ed it would pro­vide av­enues for em­ploy­ment gen­er­a­tion, wealth cre­ation, food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty, and in­creased eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

“These in­clude pri­ma­ry pro­duc­tion, im­port sub­sti­tu­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ing, agro-pro­cess­ing, in­tra-re­gion­al trade, dig­i­tal­iza­tion and e-com­merce,” the doc­u­ment said.

The im­pe­tus for ac­tion is al­so nec­es­sary based on the trend that im­port costs are on­ly set to rise.

The bill not­ed, “The Unit­ed Na­tion’s Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion (FAO) has in­di­cat­ed that glob­al food trade has in­creased and will reach a record in both vol­ume and val­ue, mark­ing a 14% in­crease from 2020, an in­crease of be­yond US$1.75 tril­lion in the glob­al food im­port bill. De­vel­op­ing re­gions ac­count for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent of the to­tal. “

A full re­view of the spend­ing habits on im­ports across the re­gion was done. It was not­ed for the pe­ri­od 2018 – 2020, the top five (5) im­port­ing coun­tries in the re­gion were:

• Haiti - US$3.161 Bil­lion

• Ja­maica - US$1.2 bil­lion

• T&T - US$1.08 bil­lion

• Ba­hamas - US$555.6 mil­lion and

• Bar­ba­dos - US$407.6 mil­lion

The food im­port bill be­tween 2018-2020 for the key com­modi­ties for these five (5) coun­tries was US$5.18 bil­lion. This, the Cari­com bill not­ed, rep­re­sent­ed 37.6% of to­tal food im­ports for the Re­gion.

To cut down on the bill, cer­tain prod­ucts were iden­ti­fied as a po­ten­tial lane to im­port re­duc­tion.

One such lane iden­ti­fied: the 25% re­duc­tion in poul­try im­ports by 2025.

The bill not­ed there was a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for im­port re­place­ment with­in the sec­tor as it not­ed both the ex­port vol­ume and val­ue of poul­try have in­creased over the pe­ri­od 2018 – 2020 with the vol­ume of poul­try ex­ports in­creased from 1,407 MT in 2018 to 1,580 MT in 2020.

Poul­try meat ac­count for greater than 80 per cent of meat con­sumed in the Re­gion, the bill not­ed.

The ma­jor poul­try ex­port­ing coun­tries in the re­gion were iden­ti­fied as Ja­maica, Trinidad & To­ba­go and Bar­ba­dos.

The re­port said, “In 2020, ex­tra-re­gion­al mar­kets sup­plied an es­ti­mat­ed 98.8% of the poul­try im­port­ed by Cari­com mem­ber states, with on­ly 1.2% be­ing im­port­ed from with­in the re­gion.

Abrahim Ali, 58, works in a corn field in the Caroni Plains.

RISHI RAGOONATH

The in­creas­ing vol­ume of poul­try im­ports, 82,951MT in 2018 to 110,675MT in 2020 from ex­tra-re­gion­al coun­tries sig­nals the need to de­vel­op the lo­cal poul­try in­dus­tries in the re­gion in or­der to meet its de­mand and re­duce both the vol­ume and val­ue of poul­try im­ports. “

How­ev­er, the bill al­so not­ed “the po­ten­tial mar­kets that ex­ist with­in the re­gion for coun­tries that are able to fur­ther de­vel­op their poul­try in­dus­try, in­crease pro­duc­tion and meet the de­mands of those mar­kets. Coun­tries with in­creas­ing ex­tra-re­gion­al im­ports and po­ten­tial mar­kets in­clude An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Grena­da, Ja­maica, St. Lu­cia, St. Vin­cent & the Grenadines and Suri­name. “

In 2020, the lead­ing pro­duc­ers of poul­try were Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Guyana, Ja­maica, Suri­name, and Trinidad and To­ba­go. These coun­tries col­lec­tive­ly pro­duced 83% of the poul­try in the re­gion (Ja­maica - 123,636MT, Guyana - 47,112MT, Trinidad - 22,606Mt, Be­lize - 18,534MT, Suri­name - 17,927MT and Bar­ba­dos - 15, 942MT).

The poul­try plants in these six Cari­com Mem­ber States were cleared since 2018 to sell poul­try prod­ucts in­tra-re­gion­al­ly af­ter they were as­sessed by Re­gion­al Risk As­sess­ments Teams and met the san­i­tary re­quire­ments to en­ter the Cari­com Mar­ket.

In 2020, the to­tal val­ue of poul­try im­ports con­sist­ing of meat and ed­i­ble of­fal of fowls of the species Gal­lus do­mes­ti­cus, ducks, geese, turkeys and guinea fowls, fresh, chilled or frozen was US$ 242.288 mil­lion.

The re­port stat­ed, “At the broad­er ag­gre­gat­ed lev­el, these find­ings are very con­sis­tent with the re­cent­ly con­duct­ed study by the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CP­SO), that poul­try im­port rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nent for which there is sig­nif­i­cant pro­duc­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty in the Re­gion. Ex­ploit­ing these im­port re­place­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, how­ev­er, re­quires fur­ther analy­sis of the dis­ag­gre­gat­ed da­ta, cap­tur­ing con­sump­tion and im­port de­mand nu­ances for poul­try meat, at the coun­try lev­el, from which the busi­ness cas­es can be gen­er­at­ed. “

Ex­pan­sion of re­gion­al poul­try pro­duc­tion would how­ev­er re­quire a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in de­mand for feed in­puts.

As such the bill al­so plot­ted a Corn and Soya Ex­pan­sion Pro­gramme.

The bill said, “It would be in the strate­gic in­ter­est of the re­gion, to in­vest the nec­es­sary re­sources in ex­pand­ing its pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ties for the cul­ti­va­tion and pro­cess­ing of corn and soy; the two main in­gre­di­ents in poul­try feed for­mu­la­tion.”

The bill added, “Guyana giv­en its am­ple nat­ur­al re­sources (land and fresh wa­ter) has tak­en the ini­tia­tive and em­barked on a rapid but phased ex­pan­sion of corn and soy cul­ti­va­tion. Cur­rent­ly, the sec­ond phase of tri­als is be­ing un­der­tak­en and Guyana is tar­get­ing an acreage of 25,000 acres (an in­crease from 120 acres in 2021), by 2025. Suc­cess­ful cul­ti­va­tion of the first tri­al of 115 acres of soya bean, and 5 acres of corn in 2021. A 2,700-acre com­mer­cial tri­al is planned for 2022. “

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Guyana President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali and Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley during a tour of the Agri Investment Forum Expo II yesterday at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain.

ANISTO ALVES

The ini­tia­tive al­so not­ed the re­gion must be­gin to strate­gi­cal­ly fo­cus on the var­i­ous ar­eas in its ef­forts to re­duce the food im­port bill such as “SPS and Trade Re­lat­ed Poli­cies, In­creased Pro­duc­tion and Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, Mar­ket Dri­ven Pro­duc­tion and In­tel­li­gence, Cross Bor­der Pro­duc­tion and In­vest­ments , Cli­mate Smart Agri­cul­ture , Re­gion­al Food and Nu­tri­tion Se­cu­ri­ty Sta­tus, Co­or­di­na­tion and Gov­er­nance Mech­a­nism, Dig­i­tal­iza­tion of the Sec­tor and De-risk­ing and Fi­nan­cial Lit­er­a­cy of the Re­gion­al Agri­cul­ture Sec­tor”

The bill al­so im­ple­ment­ed strate­gies that each Cari­com mem­ber state could fol­low to re­duce its im­port bill.

In the case of Trinidad and To­ba­go, it not­ed this coun­try’s im­port sub­sti­tu­tion op­por­tu­ni­ty is sig­nif­i­cant at US$19 mil­lion.

“With a strong group of pro­duc­ers on the Is­land, a por­tion of the op­por­tu­ni­ty could be cap­tured with in­vest­ment in me­chan­i­cal­ly debon­ing fa­cil­i­ties and pro­duc­tion of leg quar­ters to sat­is­fy im­port de­mand. In­vest­ment in­cen­tives for lo­cal pro­duc­ers to ad­dress this op­por­tu­ni­ty should be con­sid­ered. “ the bill not­ed.

It sug­gest­ed,”The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go should con­sid­er, fol­low­ing mod­i­fi­ca­tions, adopt­ing the Cari­com Poul­try Stan­dard that was de­vel­oped by CROSQ to ad­dress im­port re­quire­ments and pro­duc­tion. As a pro­cess­ing cen­ter it is im­por­tant for these stan­dards to be en­forced which would like­ly dis­place a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of im­ports and pro­vide fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cal pro­duc­tion growth.”

The bill al­so called for the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er pro­vid­ing in­vest­ment in­cen­tives for re-tool­ing of the in­dus­try to ad­dress the re­gion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for processed prod­ucts.

The bill not­ed, “ho­moge­nous cross cut­ting is­sues which Mem­ber States are cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing which must be ad­dressed to at­tain the tar­gets of the 25% by 2025. These is­sues are crit­i­cal to its suc­cess must a have an ac­com­pa­ny­ing or com­ple­men­tary strate­gies that will run par­al­lel with the var­i­ous na­tion­al or re­gion­al pro­duc­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty ef­forts. “

These “Cross Cut­ting Is­sues” in­clud­ed trans­porta­tion con­cerns such as the lo­gis­tics net­work which re­quired im­prove­ment as it cur­rent­ly de­ter­ring po­ten­tial ser­vice providers from en­ter­ing the mar­ket, par­tic­u­lar­ly for high­ly per­ish­able prod­ucts as well as im­prove­ment of stor­age at ports of en­try and ex­it.