[NYTr] The Caribbean, A View from Europe
 
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:26:36 -0600 (CST)

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Prensa Latina, Havana
http://www.plenglish.com

The Caribbean, A View from Europe

By Elsy Fors

Central Bureau, Dec 30 (Prensa Latina) Europe has been eager to make
Caribbean negotiators sign an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA)
before year s end, but the old continent has missed out on several
realities.

As consultant on Caribbean affairs based in London, David Jessop says,
in the last few years global food prices have been pushed to record
levels by climate change, an insatiable appetite for grain from the
bio-fuel industry, unbridled speculation and soaring oil prices, among
other factors..

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization believes these are structural
trends and will push the cost of agricultural commodities in the next
decade between 20 and 50 per cent higher than the last 10-year average.

In Britain, the Cabinet Office is looking at the future of crop yields
in the face of changing weather patterns, the increased use of food for
bio-fuels and a shift in the size and location of the world population.

Although it is too early to predict the outcome, alerts Jessop,
responses may include radical changes in where the food is grown, new
approaches to EU farming policy and the rethinking of policies on
higher yielding genetically modified crops.

It is also likely that food security will be incorporated into one of a
number of radically slimmed down foreign policy objectives to be
announced soon.

This point, however, may bring renewed pressure on Caribbean nations
because, like Britain, the rest of the 27-member Union will consider
their sources of food a matter of national security.

According to Jessop, who is also director of the Caribbean Council, a
non-government organization based in London, many food-importing
countries have started to look for ways to increase their domestic
production or build stockpiles as a buffer against higher prices.

In the western hemisphere, Venezuela and Cuba have recognized the vital
social and political importance of increasing food production, affirms
Jessop, while in the Caribbean, governments have also recognized that
food security is an issue on which they must act quickly, not least
because increasing food prices represent a ticking political time bomb
with voters.

At a meeting in Georgetown on December 7, Caribbean Heads of Government
agreed that CARICOM -Caribbean Community- duties on food imported from
outside the region should be removed in order to reduce prices.

However, this may lead actions in the wrong direction, because although
cheaper, the elimination of duties for imported food may diminish the
awareness of the need to increase domestic production of agricultural
produce.

Barbados Prime Minister, Owen Arthur, noted that Heads had agreed that
the appropriate regional response to rapidly increasing food prices was
the amendment of the Common External Tariff (CET) that is levied on
some extra regional imports.

A regional task force would, he said, evaluate rapidly proposals for
change with the objective that trade ministers should at the end of
January make recommendations on how the CET should be amended to keep
prices under control.

In addition to these short-term measures, the Georgetown mini-summit
identified longer term approaches aimed at trying to reduce the
region"s alarming food import bill which is now put at around
US$3.5billion per annum.

A CARICOM agriculture investment forum is planned in Guyana for early
2008 to spur investment in producing more food in the so called "empty
spaces" in Guyana, Suriname and Belize.

In arguing that the removal of tariffs on some imported foodstuffs
would be an expedient response to high food prices, Caribbean Heads
were accepting that their already hard-pressed treasuries - they will
shortly have to accommodate the fiscal impact of trade liberalisation
through an EPA with Europe.

They were also effectively accepting that they make the region"s high
cost agriculture more vulnerable to subsidized foodstuffs from the US
and elsewhere.

More positively the recent Heads of Government meeting suggested that
if the region can implement a viable increase in food production for
domestic or regional consumption and other related issues like
inter-regional transport, nations like Guyana, Belize, Suriname, Cuba
and the Dominican Republic could see a resurgence in economic growth in
rural areas, based on agriculture.

Food security is now affecting nations at all levels of development,
warns the London specialist in Caribbean matters.

Even for those nations of the Caribbean basin whose main income comes
from tourism, production costs of this service industry could be
greatly reduced by food produced locally and not dearly paid for in
imports.

And that is besides the fact of the need to feed the population, for
which domestically produced food can become a strategic asset.

ef PL-1

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