Chairman of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) and president of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo wants the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to support the Caribbean’s agriculture plan.

Jagdeo, who has responsibility for agriculture in the Caricom Quasi Cabinet, on Monday told world leaders gathered at the FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy for the FAO World Food Summit that the region needs the support of the FAO for its agriculture programme “the Jagdeo Initiative on Agriculture”

“We have a regional plan which we are pursuing and we are receiving support, but sometimes the relatively higher GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of our region, compared to some developing countries, mask a lot of the poverty and under nutrition in our societies and they mask the vulnerability to natural disasters and the debilitating high level of debt servicing. so when the FAO talks about graduating us out of some access, we want to ask that these countries remain with a model that is sustainable,” he said.

But while lobbying for the FAO support Jagdeo wasted no time to chide his regional counterparts for not paying enough attention to agriculture, which he believes is the answer to any food crisis to hit the Caribbean now or in the future.

Jagdeo said many Caribbean leaders were seduced by cheap food and not paying attention to regional food security. As a result, the Caribbean has moved from a position where it could feed itself to incurring a US$4-billion food import bill.

“For us in the developing world, we can’t just complain. Many of us don’t even allocate money for agriculture, for drainage and irrigation and farm-to-market roads. We don’t even request loans from the multilateral agencies, so we can’t just ask for help we also have to make agriculture

a priority.”

The Guyanese leader and Caricom chair also used the opportunity to urge leaders gathered there raise their voices if the message on promoting agriculture across the world is to be heard.

Jagdeo said while the Declaration for the forum was “a wonderful example of the hard work that everyone has put in at this summit”, the world should no longer rely on the developed world to act.

“We cannot rely on the benevolence of the developed world to keep their promises on ODA (overseas development assistance) or reverse the decline on ODA to agriculture, or pursue trade polices that would not impoverish us further, or to remove the debilitating subsidies. These are not going to happen just by themselves.”

Jagdeo also called on his counterparts from around the world to move beyond the usual “diagnosis” of the food crisis and now focus on finding answers.

“We need to get out of here after this (the Summit). We know what the message is. It’s written all here. It’s in the speeches that you would all make, and find an effective way of communicating this message to the rest of the world, to start building widespread support through internet, bypassing the mainstream media, through the progressive (media) like Al Jazeera and some others around the world that are prepared to carry this message mainstream,” Jagdeo urged.

The World Summit on Food Security ran from November 16-18 and focused on the reform of the current global food distribution system, which has demonstrated its weaknesses during the global recession.

According to FAO, 31 economically poor countries that are net importers of food, but lack money for imports, were affected by famine caused by high food prices, though crop production was good this year.

The FAO’s annual report on food security, the number of people suffering from chronic malnutrition worldwide has topped one billion as the global financial crisis affected food supplies to the poorest countries. East African countries, where 20 million people are currently in the need of emergency food aid, are the worst affected.