Chair­man of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM0 and Pres­i­dent of Guyana, Dr. Ir­faan Ali says that CARI­COM’s Min­is­te­r­i­al Task Force on agri­cul­ture has been asked to con­vene a strate­gic meet­ing to ad­dress the set­back to the sec­tor in the af­ter­math of Hur­ri­cane Beyrl.

In a live broad­cast on Sun­day, Ali said im­pact of hur­ri­cane Beryl on the Caribbean has been dis­as­trous and on some is­lands com­plete­ly wiped out the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, re­sult­ing in a di­rect set­back to the re­gion’s vi­sion of re­duc­ing the food im­port bill by 25 per­cent by 2025.

To ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion, he said a “com­pre­hen­sive” analy­sis is need­ed on the im­pact in the af­fect­ed coun­tries.

He said dur­ing the planned meet­ing, the Min­is­te­r­i­al task force will look at strate­gic in or­der to move for­ward.

Ali, who has re­spon­si­bi­ity for Agri­cul­ture with­in CARI­COM, said the task force will al­so ex­plore ideas on how the is­lands can re­build, make tech­nol­o­gy avail­able and plant quick yield­ing va­ri­eties to get some earn­ings back to farm­ers.

The task force will al­so dis­cuss price sta­bil­i­ty and crit­i­cal com­modi­ties need­ed so that it can be sup­plied to the af­fect­ed is­lands to avoid fur­ther im­pact at the house­hold lev­el.

“There are some thoughts and some ini­tial ideas that I have al­ready shared with some col­leagues and al­so the Chair of the Min­is­te­r­i­al Task Force on agri­cul­ture to see how we can quick­ly mo­bilise the nec­es­sary stake­hold­ers and re­sources to ad­dress this tremen­dous set­back that our 25 by 2025 ac­tion plan is be­ing hit with by Beryl,” Ali said.

The CARI­COM chair­man said he al­so in­tends to re­quest the in­ter­ven­tion of the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion (FAO) and the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion of Agri­cul­ture (ECA) from an ear­ly stage to as­sist farm­ers and work with the re­gion.

“Be­cause for sure there are some changes in the methol­o­gy and changes in the ap­proach to food pro­duc­tion that we will have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in this phase,” Ali said.

Al­so im­por­tant, he said, is the nu­tri­tion val­ue when deal­ing with the con­se­quences of the hur­ri­cane.

“The quick fix now is to get more im­me­di­ate food in…so that we can al­so have the nu­tri­tion food val­ues af­fect­ed.”

While an as­sess­ment is still on­go­ing, Ali fur­ther not­ed that ini­tial as­sess­ments have showed that the agri­cul­ture sec­tor has suf­fered tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in loss­es.

The af­fect­ed is­lands are Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Ja­maica and Grena­da.

“As lead head on agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­ri­ty, I am tremen­dous­ly con­cern at the set­back hur­ri­cane Beryl would have on the 25 by 2025 food se­cu­ri­ty plan.

“The ini­tial as­sess­ment is heart wrench­ing to our farm­ers, the gov­ern­ments and to the peo­ple of these coun­tries. It is heart wrench­ing be­cause of the tremen­dous in­vest­ment, pol­i­cy com­mit­ment and bud­get sup­port that was placed on the agri­cul­ture sec­tor since 2020,” Ali said.

He not­ed that all of the af­fect­ed is­lands were on tar­get of achiev­ing the 25 by 2025 ini­tia­tive.

“There is a lot of short, medi­um and long term is­sues in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor in the Caribbean that must be ad­dressed and be ad­dressed in a com­pre­hen­sive way.

“In most of the cas­es, it is the rur­al farm­ers and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties that have suf­fered the most and in­vest­ment re­quired to bring back these com­mu­ni­ties in­to pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty is go­ing to be enor­mous,” Ali said.