Georgetown : The Government held a one day seminar in catalysing efforts towards the implementation of the Jagdeo Initiative on Agriculture.
Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, Former President Bharrat Jagdeo, Minister Ali, Representative, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Guyana Dr. Lystra Fletcher-Paul and General Counsel and Officer-in-Charge, CARICOM, Safiya Ali all addressed the opening the event.
The Jagdeo Initiative on Agriculture, conceptualised by Former President Bharrat Jagdeo is in essence a strategy formulated to develop agriculture in the region. It identifies and defines nine key, critical and binding constraints to the development of the agriculture sector in the Caribbean region and also practical interventions at both the regional and national levels to alleviate these constraints.
Dr. Jagdeo stated the urgency for the implementation of the strategy given that the world is facing even tougher times than those experienced when the strategy was conceptualised. The world food supply is currently being affected by the worst recession since the 1930s and the greater threat of climate change.
Mr Jagdeo called for political support behind the agriculture sector in each country in order that it could bloom. He said that when the strategy was initialised, it focused at the time and rightly so, solely on all the things that affected agriculture and the solutions that were needed for agriculture to flourish in the region.
He said that what was taken for granted is that there was political support in each country behind the sector that would enable the growth following the interventions to the constraints.
He said that this “seems not to be the case” and advised that without political support in each country behind the agriculture sector then any technical initiative that is initiated, no matter how good that strategy, it will not deliver results.
In this regard Dr. Jagdeo urged the need to “build this political support for the sector across the region.”
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