IICA Associate Deputy Director General David Hatch
The local Agriculture Ministry has joined those of other Caribbean countries to discuss the issue of climate change and its effects on agriculture, with the target group being small and medium-scale farmers.
The three-day workshop, which commenced on Monday, seeks to address putting measures in place to ensure the sector’s sustainability. The workshop is also aimed at tackling three themes: to create a disaster risk management plan, to deal with the issue of climate change, and to provide agriculture insurance for farmers.
Among those addressing the workshop was the Associate Deputy Director General for the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), David Hatch, as well as top Government representatives from various countries, including Guyana, Jamaica, Belize, and Dominica.
Hatch said that they were now concerned about not producing the kind of foods and the quantity they expected within the Caribbean and this should not have been so. He explained that the Caribbean did not need to import all of the foods that are currently being imported since it had the capacity to produce them.
Against this backdrop, he reiterated the fact that the Caribbean unnecessarily spends about four to five billion US dollars per year on food imports. He said the same money could be used to boost the sector and also to assist farmers when they are being affected by disasters.
Right policies
Hatch added that if the right policies were put in place, much of the imported food could be produced under the same conditions in the Caribbean, helping small and medium-size farmers recover from the disasters they would have experienced due to climate change by the importation of strategies not food to help them get back on their feet. “Disaster assistance by Governments in many instances has proven to be a political tool, which is often expensive and poorly administered,” he noted.
The IICA representative explained that the three initiatives that were being discussed were interconnected to deal with the issues of climate change effects on small and medium-size farmers who make up the most vulnerable group in the agriculture sector.
Plans to carry out these initiatives will be created for Guyana, Jamaica, Dominica and Belize. He said this was the beginning of a process, which would continue to move forward over the next three to four years.
The agriculture sector is faced with the twin challenges of producing enough food for a growing population and ensuring the livelihoods of people whose subsistence depends on farming.
The Americas’ position remains firm on agriculture within the agenda of international climate change as they believe that urgent action is needed to support the people most vulnerable to climate change and to adapt production systems as explained by the IICA Associate Deputy Director General.
Measures need to be put in place to transform agriculture since it remains the source of our food and must be managed in a very coordinated way.
As for crop insurance to become an available economic tool for the farmer in Guyana, there must be a coordinated approach which involves the Government, the financial sector, programme leaders and the agricultural sector.
“The farmer should be the centre of our concern and we must do all we can to keep him in farming,” Hatch reiterated.