Nicholls: Focus on regional food production

CARIBBEAN countries are being told that they need to pursue niches in the global food business so as to lower the region’s massive food import bill and earn foreign exchange.

The challenge was thrown out to the region by Dr. Shelton Nicholls when he addressed one of the sessions of the Central Bank of Barbados 33rd Annual Review seminar.

Dr. Nicholls said that the Bds$9.0 billion that represents the Caribbean’s food import bill could accelerate further if climate change intensifies globally.

At the same time, he went on, there is a radical shift in nutrition patterns, given the influx several fast food chains. This, he reasoned, had resulted in a sharp rise in nutrition-related non-communicable diseases, especially diabetes and hypertension.

Dr. Nicholls, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, said that Organic Monitor, one of the leading suppliers of agricultural information on organic products, currently estimates global organic food sales at around Bds$126 billion with a steady growing demand in Europe, North America and Asia.

He said too that so far a substantial quantum of the market is in food and drink, although there are strong possibilities for medicinal plants, dermatological products, fruit, cereals and meat.

“There is an urgent need for the region to begin to utilise its significant agricultural land masses in Guyana, Belize and Suriname, to not only supply organically grown food staples for the Caribbean region, but to also produce for export,” he suggested.

“This would allow the development of synergies between agriculture and the health sector and could reduce the significant food be import bill for the region while at the same time allowing the region to maintain high nutritional and dietary standards,” Dr. Nicholls added.