food and fuel forum

WORLD FOOD DAY

OCTOBER 16, 2009

Statement by the National Food Crop Farmers Association (NFFA)

ACHIEVING FOOD SECURITY IN TIMES OF CRISIS.

The Director-General of the FAO, in discussing this year’s theme for World Food Day, said that, “…Only a healthy agricultural sector, combined with a growing non-farm economy and effective safety nets and social protection programmes will be sufficient to face the global recession as well as eradicate food insecurity and poverty. The World Summit on Food Security to be held in Rome from 16 to 18 November aims to keep the challenge of food insecurity on top of the international agenda so that the right to food, the most basic of human rights, be respected…”

The NFFA fully supports this call for the right to food by citizens to be respected by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago (GORTT).

We call, also, for immediate and accelerated steps to be taken to create the enabling environment for small farmers to contribute to the food security, health and nutrition needs of the nation while earning a livelihood for their families.

Just as the NFFA has been advocating for years, recently, G8 countries confirmed their support for efforts to “…promote agricultural production and productivity, improve access to markets and trade, agricultural research, budget support, safety nets measures, nutrition, investment and infrastructure…”

In light of the current global financial crisis and climate change forecast, and the impact of these phenomena on food availability and prices, the NFFA serves notice on the GORTT that indifference to an effective agricultural policy cannot continue. Food security cannot depend on mega-farms. The small farmers of this country are and will be the backbone of any food security program. We have to stop that race to the tipping point of food insecurity. NFFA is calling, on this World Food Day 2009, for immediate, positive action to be taken to protect and enhance the nation’s capability to achieve acceptable levels of food security.

We are ready to work, as the key stakeholder, with the Ministries of Agriculture, Local Government and Works, other state and international agencies and The UWI, to review and develop an enhanced and holistic agriculture sector development policy and an implementation strategy.

The findings and recommendations from international agencies working on eradicating poverty and making food available to all highlight similar recommendations made by the NFFA over the last decades. Crucial among these are:

 Create an enabling environment for the small farmer community by incentivising agriculture;
 Formulate and implement a Land Policy and Land Use Management Plan;
 Rationalize the use of prime agricultural lands for agricultural use and not for housing by the HDC
 Provide incentives that would lead to the reduction of the cost of production i.e. equipment, seeds, fertilizers;
 Regularize the cost of lands to farmers at agricultural and not market rates and provide farmers with long term security of tenure;
 Guarantee decent prices to farmers;
 Create a system of agriculture intelligence;
 Develop a network of access roads, instituting appropriate irrigation systems, land preparation and maintenance systems;
 Provide effective extension services;
 Reactivate research facilities and programmes involving the development of seed banks, plant plasma research etc.;
 Support innovation by farmers into new areas of production, such as cassava and its by-products;
 Provide at all levels, at every opportunity, information which needs to be sourced and disseminated about the markets, prices, what the transnational corporations are up to. This a conscious effort to facilitate informed participation in the transformation process by those involved in the small farming sector;
 Promote healthy eating habits and ensure that school feeding programs support local farmers;
 Build the farmer consumer alliance at individual and institutional levels;
 Use indigenous technology to develop foods that would assist in breaking the stranglehold of the grain suppliers in the spirit of the research that was pioneered almost a generation ago by people like Dr. George Moonsammy;
 Ensure that our technocrats at global fora are fully cognisant of the impact of trade agreements on the agriculture sector and they negotiate agreements that are protective of the sector;
 Develop on and implement the numerous ideas and studies that have promoted the development of an integrated Caribbean food sector. Many of the plans are workable. What is missing is the political will to transform a sector which provides such lucrative returns for a parasitic import and distribution sector and which implicitly repudiates the domination of the transnational corporations. Individually small islands are unable to become self sufficient because of land space vis a vis growing populations. However, between the Spanish speaking Cuba and Venezuela lies a vast land and sea resource including: Cuba, Jamaica, St. Vincent, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, Belize etc.

While the above is not an exhaustive list of tasks that must be performed, they certainly will provide Caribbean people with a base upon which they can build the structures and institutions necessary to achieve food sovereignty.

We make this appeal to the GORTT once again on this World Food Day, 2009

Norris Deonarine