Mr. Chairperson;
Dr. L. Barbara Graham, FAO Representative;
Mr. Bruce Lauckner; Executive Director (ag), CARDI
Ms. Emanuela Benini, Director, Italian Cooperation, Regional office for Central America and the Caribbean, Embassy of Italy, Guatemala;
Mr. Greg Rawlings, Project Consultant
National Coordinators and Focal Points;
Colleagues All:

It gives me great pleasure to be with you this morning in the opening session of this very important Workshop. I note from the Agenda that this promises to be a very timely intervention, both from the perspective of your own scheduling of work programme activities as well as the fact that this event comes on the heels as it were, of our just concluded Agriculture Donor Conference. At the Donor Conference much attention was placed, and rightfully so, on the question of how well and how much we in the Caribbean can rise to the position where we need not worry about the pressing issues of sufficient and nutritious food for all of our population. As you might be aware, the Integrated Package of Proposals presented to and discussed at the Donor Conference included the ambitious Up-Scale Food Security Programme.

Let me thank the Government of Italy and the FAO for the generous pledges they made at the Donor Conference.

There is of necessity a number of dimensions to the Food Security issue. Today, I will just touch on two. One is the impact of international developments that affect our ability to be both self sufficient in our food production and internationally competitive in order to export more. The other dimension is how, at the domestic and regional levels, we in CARICOM can address our food insecurity within the context of the Millennium Development Goals.

A cursory examination of the history of trade in agriculture within the last two decades will show that agricultural trade stakeholders have had to endure increased cost of production due to regulatory and policy prescriptions with the result of a trend of increasing food prices.

While we face the prospect of the end of the days of ‘cheap food’ as one commentator recently put it we are, however, heartened by the efforts being made in the direction of the eradication of Extreme Poverty and Hunger in keeping with the Declaration of the Millennium Development Goals.

We must commend the sponsors of this Regional Food Security Programme - the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Government of Italy – as well as the Project Management Unit who, from all accounts, have been trying to realise some tangible progress in the reduction of poverty and hunger in our midst.

We recognise that there is however still a long way to go. Recent statistics available signal that over the last decade or so, while there has been a slight improvement in the prevalence of under-nourishment in countries such as Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and some of the OECS countries, we in the Caribbean are still quite vulnerable due largely to our dependence on food imports. Further, we seem to be having a very worrying climb in our incidence of nutrition-related diseases such as diabetes which may be a direct effect of our desire for fast foods and other urbanized consumption patterns.

We at the Secretariat continue to support, through the promotion of sectoral policy reform, all the initiatives such as this one which investigate and attempt to correct these tendencies.

We see this Project as helping to inform policy through the implementation of pilot projects at the national level, albeit on a relatively small scale, and we are confident that the results will demonstrate, both to the farmers and the decision makers, the viability and possibility of meeting the challenges of hunger and poverty.

There is one other observation I would like to make in closing and that is that as much as our attention has been focused more or less on agriculture production, we cannot afford to ignore the critical importance of education and public awareness inherent in any successful strategy for effecting change. In this regard, the inclusion of a school training component within the Project is commendable and all attempts should be made to ensure its sustainability, even after the life of the Project.

We need also to ensure that our Health and Education Sectors, our Youth and Civil Society and our Private Sector, including our food distributors, are on board, working with us at every stage to create a literate, thinking and healthy population in CARICOM.

Colleagues, your attendance at this Workshop attests to your sharing of this ideal of collaborative effort and to your commitment to continue the process towards achievement.

Let me wish you a most productive and successful Workshop.

Contact: piu@caricom.org