Caribbean Investment Forum Magazine

Embracing AgTech: How The Caribbean Can Achieve 25 in 5 And Reduce Its Food Import Bill

2022

he Caribbean, one of the most vulnerable regions of the world continues to contend with arguably the greatest tumultuous period post industrial era. This era, dubbed the three C’s - Climate, COVID-19 and Con fl ict - hinder the strides made towards its economic development and attainment of overall lo ft y ideals of the sustainable development agenda. T For the Caribbean, the impetus to recover from the stranglehold of the COVID-19 pandemic is made even more acute given the region’s high debt-to GDP ratios, food insecurity and attendant ast ronomi cal food impor t bi l l whi ch according to CARICOM fi gures stood at USD 5 billion in 2018. The region’s vulnerabilities are further exacerbated by the disruptions in the global supply chain making the refrain on airwaves, the rising prices of consumer goods, including food; from The Bahamas to Trinidad and Tobago, Belize and Saint Lucia, nowhere is absolved of this growing concern. 5 Consequently, it is laudable that Caribbean governments, led by CARICOM have set a target to reduce by 2025, regional food imports by 25%. Dubbed 25 in 5, this strategy fi nds its foundation in the Caribbean Community Agriculture Policy (CAP) that seeks to undertake policy measures and incentives that support food production in the Region. The obvious question, however, is how can this be ach i eved when , save for acreage abundant countries like Belize, Guyana and

Suriname, there simply is not enough arable land to scale production towards reversing this food insecure trend? The answer lies in turning conventional thinking on its head and embracing technology to build food security. Digital technologies are transforming agriculture and food production, speci fi cally, in the agriculture and food sector. The spread of mobile technologies, remote-sensing services and distributed computing are already improving smallholders’ access to information, inputs and markets, increasing production and productivity, streamlining supply chains and reducing operational costs. Israel is a model of ingenuity and smart technology; no other s i ng l e count r y s i nce the 1 950s has contributed more breakthroughs to tackle the problem of dwindling natural resources owing to an expanding global population. Indeed, Israel has found ways to green their desert, developing solutions for more e ffi c i ent farmi ng, hardi er crops and alternative sources of nutrition to name a few of those innovations. Aspiring to those models would be vacuous unless they were de fi ned by unambiguous and focused strategies. These policies must be grounded in a framework that involves the private sector and international donor partners, and but t r es sed by mu l t i l ate r a l suppo r t , pa r t i cu l a r l y i n t he a r eas o f po l i cy intervention, institutional strengthening, investment, and sector fi nancing. 6

30

5 https://today.caricom.org/2020/07/27/25-in-5- plan-to-tackle-caricom-food-import-bill/ SOURCES 6 https://today.caricom.org/2020/07/27/25-in-5- plan-to-tackle-caricom-food-import-bill/