Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali says Cari­com’s Min­is­te­r­i­al Task Force will be con­ven­ing a strate­gic meet­ing to ad­dress the tremen­dous im­pact of Hur­ri­cane Beryl on the agri­cul­ture and food sec­tors.

In a live broad­cast yes­ter­day, Ali, as lead Head of Gov­ern­ment with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­ri­ty at Cari­com, said he was ex­treme­ly con­cerned about the sig­nif­i­cant set­back Hur­ri­cane Beryl had on re­gion­al food se­cu­ri­ty, es­pe­cial­ly their plans to re­duce im­por­ta­tion by 25 per cent by 2025.

Ali added that the ini­tial im­pact on the agri­cul­ture sec­tor on in­fra­struc­ture, crops, and liveli­hoods from the agri­cul­ture and fish­ery sec­tors is in the tens of mil­lions of dol­lars. He said that on some of the af­fect­ed is­lands, agri­cul­ture had been wiped out.

Ali said he had asked the chair of the Min­is­te­r­i­al Task Force to con­vene a strate­gic meet­ing “in the new week” to in­clude the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion of Agri­cul­ture (ECA), Em­bra­pa, and the Brazil­ian Gov­ern­ment to see how they could re­build agri­cul­ture on the is­lands, use tech­nol­o­gy, and in­tro­duce quick-yield­ing prod­ucts to get in­come to farm­ers.

He added that the min­is­te­r­i­al task force will al­so be look­ing at price and price­abil­i­ty and ne­go­ti­at­ing with neigh­bour­ing coun­tries to sup­ply crit­i­cal com­modi­ties to mit­i­gate the im­pact on con­sumers.

“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,” he added.

He said he would al­so re­quest an ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion by the ECA and the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion (FAO) to as­sist the farm­ers. “Be­cause for sure there are some changes in the method­ol­o­gy and in the ap­proach to food pro­duc­tion that we will have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in this phase,” Ali said.

An­oth­er im­por­tant as­pect, he said, that is some­times over­looked is the nu­tri­tion­al im­pact of deal­ing with the con­se­quences of hur­ri­cane-dev­as­tat­ed coun­tries.

The af­fect­ed coun­tries are Grena­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia, and Ja­maica. Ac­cord­ing to a press state­ment on the Re­liefweb site post­ed yes­ter­day, the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) has de­ployed staff to Grena­da and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines to as­sist in de­liv­er­ing im­me­di­ate re­sponse sup­port.