Georgetown: “ Unless we have a research agenda, unless we have the right place where agriculture is located within our development agenda, unless we recognize that agriculture is one of the most important pillars on which we develop our nations we are not going to succeed.” according to Minister of Agriculture, Dr Leslie Ramsammy.
This was disclosed at a workshop on evidence-based coverage of ARD issues in the Caribbean, Guyana International Conference Centre (GICC).
He called for the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), the University of the West Indies, Caricom, National Governments to work together in partnership with organizations such as the CTA in partnership with the Media Association of the Caribbean.
“Together we can change the reality of 8.3 million people in our region living in food insecure states, but we can also ensure that agriculture is not merely for subsistence livelihood and rural development but it is to generate wealth for our people, to generate wealth for our nations. That is how we will ensure that each of our countries can come to 2025 reaching a high middle income status.” Ramsammy noted.
He implored that indeed agriculture in our region evolved a school basically making sure that people don’t go hungry, “and we should be proud of the fact that this Region has the potential to be a hunger free region. We were one of the first sub-regions in the world to be a hunger free region. Yet we do have the scandalous situation that approximately 8 million people in our region are living in food insecure state. Food insecurity does affect 8 million people in our region- a region that has the potential even now at the level of our development now to ensure that no one goes hungry and that makes a scandalous situation. We haven’t examinein the media and in the public why that is so.”
Ramsammy continued: “The Caribbean have the potential for enormous impact though research and an opportunity we ignore at our own peril. We must pursue carefully and more aggressively the potential to improve crops in terms of the genomics of crops, introduce new crops, generate better soil management practices. We must unlock their unrealized potential for crop and livestock genos through breeding and genetic modification technologies such as more efficient photosynthetic mechanism, reduce reliance on nitrogen and other fertilizers. These research objectives must become part of the research and applied science agenda and must be supported by public funding to refine its existing crops and provide enhance yields giving us more production per acre of land for the same amount or less water.”
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