With 60-80 per cent of the food con­sumed in the re­gion not be­ing grown lo­cal­ly, lec­tur­er in bio­met­rics Dr Lystra Fletch­er-Paul says Caribbean na­tions are im­port­ing foods that are killing cit­i­zens.

Paul was one of five pre­sen­ters in the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies'  Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture's we­bi­nar on COVID-19: A Wake-Up Call for Re­gion­al Food and Nu­tri­tion Se­cu­ri­ty.

Her pre­sen­ta­tion, COVID-19: Im­pli­ca­tions for Food Avail­abil­i­ty in the Caribbean, stressed the need for coun­tries to in­crease their fo­cus on agri­cul­ture, not on­ly for sus­tain­abil­i­ty but for health­i­er pop­u­la­tions.

"We are an im­port-de­pen­dent re­gion, im­port­ing, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est sta­tis­tics, about US$6 bil­lion in food. Be­tween 60-80 per cent of the food that we con­sume is im­port­ed...

"About 90 per cent of that food im­port comes from the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. On­ly Haiti qual­i­fies for food aid among the CARI­COM coun­tries. If we look at the com­po­si­tion of the foods we are im­port­ing, we are see­ing that we are im­port­ing food prepa­ra­tion which is processed food: foods that are high in sug­ar, fat and salt. In oth­er words, we are im­port­ing food to kill our­selves," Fletch­er-Paul said.

Food avail­abil­i­ty is sim­ply the amount of food present in a coun­try.

It is di­vid­ed in­to do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion, im­ports and food stock. Re­gard­ing do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion, Fletch­er-Paul said the re­gion­al agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor con­tin­ues to de­cline since trade lib­er­al­i­sa­tion re­duced the de­mands for ba­nanas and sug­ar from the Caribbean. Based on a Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank and Food and Agri­cul­tur­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions study on coun­tries' agri­cul­tur­al con­tri­bu­tion to Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP), most share less than 5 per cent. How­ev­er, in Suri­name, Guyana, Do­mini­ca and Haiti, agri­cul­ture ac­counts for more than 10 per cent of their GDP.

Fletch­er-Paul said it was not sur­pris­ing that these coun­tries can feed them­selves. With US im­ports be­ing the main source of food, she hint­ed at pos­si­ble short­ages as glob­al re­ports show long lines of peo­ple wait­ing for food in Texas and oth­er states. Job loss­es and the clo­sure of food fac­to­ries ex­ac­er­bate the is­sue of food avail­abil­i­ty in the US. Threat­en­ing food avail­abil­i­ty in the Caribbean is the aged farm­ing pop­u­la­tion, which is a vul­ner­a­ble group for COVID-19.

But as restau­rants and ho­tels are closed dur­ing this pe­ri­od, Fletch­er-Paul ex­pects an in­crease in food avail­abil­i­ty. She not­ed, how­ev­er, there may be wastage of fruits and veg­eta­bles from the clo­sures.

Fletch­er-Paul sees a sil­ver lin­ing, say­ing that the im­pact of COVID-19 on food avail­abil­i­ty pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­tra-re­gion­al trade and cross-bor­der in­vest­ments.

In the medi­um-term, she said there is a need to sup­port back­yard, ur­ban and com­mu­ni­ty gar­den­ing and im­ple­ment sup­port­ive mea­sures for farm­ing and fish­ing. She al­so rec­om­mend­ed in­vest­ments in land and wa­ter in­for­ma­tion sys­tems.

On the busi­ness side, she wants a link be­tween tourism and agri­cul­ture to en­sure that most of the meals sold in ho­tels and restau­rants used lo­cal pro­duce. 

"Pri­vate sec­tor in­volve­ment is a key part of the medi­um to long term strat­e­gy. The pri­vate sec­tor, it seems to me, has been dic­tat­ing the food pol­i­cy of the re­gion be­cause they are the ones im­port­ing the food that is killing us. They are part of the prob­lem so they must be part of the so­lu­tion."

Dr Sharon Hutchin­son, head of the De­part­ment of Agri­cul­tur­al Eco­nom­ics and Ex­ten­sion, said while many coun­tries are re­duc­ing lev­els of un­der­nour­ish­ment, Haiti has about 50 per cent preva­lence. Hutchin­son said Do­mini­ca and Ja­maica had slight in­creas­es in un­der­nour­ish­ment in the last two decades.

With COVID-19 wors­en­ing so­cial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, she said there is the threat of peo­ple not ac­cess­ing prop­er food or not get­ting enough to reach their dai­ly caloric in­take. Hutchin­son said the hard­est hit are the poor and mi­grants pop­u­la­tions. Schools are closed and school feed­ing pro­grammes shut­down. 

"We are still re­ly­ing on ex­ports to feed our­selves. This is some­thing the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor has to pay at­ten­tion to be­cause we are re­ly­ing on things like tourism and man­u­fac­tur­ing ser­vices to bring in the food that we need.

"A lot of the food we are bring­ing in are calo­rie-rich, high fat, high sug­ar foods which are the kinds of foods that are cheap­er, rel­a­tive to nu­tri­tious op­tions. These are the kinds of foods that the more vul­ner­a­ble among us; the poor­er peo­ple, can ac­cess," Hutchin­son said.

In the short term, she said so­cial pro­tec­tion pro­grammes are need­ed to tar­get the vul­ner­a­ble. While Caribbean gov­ern­ments are do­ing this, she said it is lim­it­ed. She sug­gest­ed a tar­get­ted meal de­liv­ery pro­gramme for chil­dren who were part of school feed­ing pro­grammes and whose fam­i­lies' food sup­port grants are in­suf­fi­cient.