Regional leaders are being chastised for not doing enough to encourage farming in the wake of geopolitical tensions and other factors which could impact food imports.
Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne ignited debate about food security in his country recently after pleading for more private investment in agriculture.
“I’m a farmer,” he said. “I sell $150,000 a month in produce and meats… and growing.” The Prime Minister said that if he can do it, others with greater financial resources should also be able to invest in agriculture. It was noted that he has far more advantage than the average farmer in the country.
According to an article in the Antigua Observer, Browne’s critics have “pointed to structural barriers that can make farming difficult to scale, including access to land, water availability, financing, labour shortages, prevalent larceny, and the challenge of maintaining a consistent supply to compete with imported products. Farmers have also raised concerns about market access, storage and distribution, and the cost of inputs.”
The Caribbean is heavily dependent on the US for food, despite having vast acreage of arable land. In an article carried by America’s Quarterly last January, concerns were raised that some countries in the region were importing more than 80 percent of the food consumed by citizens. It was noted that hunger in the Caribbean region spiked in 2022, with some 4.1 million people—or 57% of the English-speaking Caribbean—reporting food insecurity, based on a study by the World Food Programme and CARICOM. Between 2018 and 2020, the top five importing countries in the region were Haiti – US$3.161 billion; Jamaica – US$1.2 billion; Trinidad and Tobago – US$1.08 billion; Bahamas – US$555.6 million; and Barbados – US$407.6 million.
A food security portal food import dependence ratio, which was designed with data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, shows that Jamaica imports 69.2 per cent of its food, while Trinidad and Tobago gets more than 96 per cent of its food from other countries.
While agriculture experts in the Caribbean welcomed a Twenty-Five by 25 initiative, aimed at reducing extra-regional food import bill by 25% before 2025, there has been no indication that this goal was achieved. In fact, Jamaica had to import a wide variety of food after experiencing agricultural losses of approximately $29.5 billion following the passage of Hurricane Melissa on October 28.
Data provided by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (Statin) showed that Jamaica’s food import bill from January to September 2023 was valued at US$1.038 billion. Food imported mainly for household consumption, including beverages, rose by 4.6 per cent at the time, to US$837.1 million. “This was due mainly to higher imports of vegetables and fruit as well as cereal and cereal preparations,” the Statin bulletin said. The rest of the food imports were for industrial use.
Jamaica’s five main trading import partners overall for the period January to July 2024 were the United States of America (USA), China, Brazil, Japan, and Trinidad and Tobago.