CORAL SPRING, Trelawny — Warning that the region is losing billions of dollars in potential earnings by failing to adequately connect its farmers and agro-processors with the tourism industry, portfolio minister Edmund Bartlett is calling for a major overhaul with the establishment of a Caribbean Tourism Agricultural Logistics Centre among a raft of proposed initiatives.

He made the call last Friday, the final for the six-day Caribbean Week of Agriculture 2026 held at Ocean Coral Spring Hotel in Trelawny.

His comments came during the plenary session on ‘Practical Building Blocks for Export Expansion’.

The proposed Caribbean Tourism Agricultural Logistics Centre, Bartlett said, should go beyond conventional storage.

“It’s not a warehouse we’re looking for here, but what we’re seeking is a repository of all the supplies from within the Caribbean area, [for example] what Barbados provides, what Guyana provides, what Jamaica provides,” he said.

The facility, he explained, would accommodate fresh agricultural commodities as well as processed products — including juices, nectars, jams, and jellies — and facilitate their distribution throughout the region.

Other measures he proposed include establishing a dedicated tourism agricultural loan programme for small farmers, and harmonising food and agricultural standards across the Caribbean.

Bartlett also wants Jamaica’s Agri- Linkages Exchange (ALEX) platform, which links farmers with tourism buyers, expanded into a Caribbeanwide system. “We know the example we’ve had in four years — over $2 billion of trade between small farmers and hoteliers,” he said of ALEX.

Under the proposed regional platform, farmers in one Caribbean country could access buyers in another, with information on prices, quantities, availability, and delivery schedules made accessible to facilitate transactions.

Meanwhile, Bartlett said the tourism agricultural loan programme would be specifically designed to help small farmers achieve the consistency, quantity and quality required by hotels, while continuing to produce distinctive crops that can enhance the visitor experience.

He pointed to Jamaica’s experience, saying the Government placed $1 billion in EXIM Bank to support a lending programme, offering up to $25 million to smalland medium-size businesses at a 4.5 per cent interest rate, repayable over five years.

Bartlett said 443 small entities had benefited, with about $3 billion already re-lent through the revolving scheme and another $750 million available.

Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Floyd Green welcomed the tourism minister’s proposals. “I support a regional ALEX,” Green said, while calling for hotels to provide real-time information on their requirements so farmers can better match production with demand.

He also backed adapting Jamaica’s tourism lending experience to agriculture. “The experience of having pioneered the loan scheme that focuses on tourism enterprises clearly can be remodelled for our small farmers,” Green said.

Bartlett further called for the harmonisation of food safety and agricultural standards across the Caribbean, arguing that common protocols would remove barriers to regional trade and make it easier for major hotel brands to source from Caribbean producers.

His proposals, he said, are aimed at creating a Caribbean tourism economy in which a greater share of the money generated by visitors remains within the region — turning the relationship between the Caribbean’s “oil” and “soil” into a stronger engine of economic growth.

Bartlett argued that tourism, the Caribbean’s major economic driver, must be deliberately used to create a larger and more reliable market for regional agriculture.

“Tourism is our oil in the Caribbean…thanks to Guyana. Yes, and agriculture is our soil. The effort, therefore, is to bring our oil in consonance with our soil, and to create a Caribbean outcome that feeds the Caribbean, and then invite the world to come and taste it, and pay for it,” the tourism minister argued.

He said the region needs a comprehensive policy framework linking production, financing, infrastructure, marketing, and distribution, while eliminating leakages from the tourism economy.

Noting that agriculture accounts for about 42 per cent of visitor consumption requirements, he questioned how much of that demand is being met by Caribbean producers. “Where does the food come from?

Whose food are they consuming? Is it the Caribbean food, or is it imported food?” he asked. The minister argued that the scale of imports represents a major opportunity for local producers, insisting that the region must move away from an overly extractive tourism model.

“We have been concerned because, for us, tourism is the driving economic force of the region but it has been a very extractive industry — and that requires a paradigm shift,” Bartlett said.