BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Real concerns about food security and the viability of regional agriculture has prompted a two-day special meeting of the ‘Alliance of Ministers of Agriculture and Regional Institutions’ which gets underway this morning at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston.

The major focus of the meeting will be consideration of what is known within Caricom as ‘The Jagdeo Initiative’ for the strategic re-positioning of the region’s vital agriculture sector.

The title resulted from the unanimous endorsement by Caricom Heads of Government, at their July 2004 Summit in Grenada, of a working document from the President of Guyana Bharrat Jagdeo who has special portfolio responsibility among community leaders for agriculture.

Caricom, on the basis of that document, is now considering the repositioning of the region’s agriculture to rest primarily on two “clear and mutually reinforcing pillars – the global competitiveness of agri-products and balanced development of rural areas and communities…”

Three priorities, therefore, for the meeting the Observer was told, are:

. gearing for global competitiveness;

. reducing the skyrocketing food imports bill, estimated at approximately US$1.3 billion annually; and

. advancing food security with a special emphasis on nutrition and health care.

The agriculture ministers and their technocrats will get an update from Dr Patrick I Gomes, Consultant Project Manager of the Italy-funded Food and Agriculture Organisation food security programme for the Caribbean region.

Two years ago, agriculture ministers attending a Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) meeting, had endorsed the creation of a Regional Special Programme for Food Security (RSPFS) involving an expenditure of some US$26 million.

To date, however, the principal source of funding for the food project has been the Government of Italy’s Trust Fund with an allocation of approximately US$5 million.

According to Gomes, the urgency to move ahead on regional food security within the context of the ‘Jagdeo Initiative’ was now greater than when the RSPFS was endorsed by the region.

“The urgency,” he said, should be evident “in the face of an unsustainable food import bill; increasing unemployment, violent crimes often related to narco-trafficking, and worsening social conditions in rural communities.”

Gomes added that the sector has also seen “the marginalisation of small agricultural producers” due largely to intense competition, and in circumstances where small farmers found themselves pitted against “transnational capital anxious to expand market share of food products and their distribution.”