Old people does say, “Doan hang yuh hat wheh yuh haan cyaan reach”. Now, your Eyewitness doesn’t think our Pressie’s recent concession: that we in Caricom didn’t accomplish our goal to cut food imports by 25% by 2025 – “25 by 25” – was a case in which we couldn’t do it. The question is whether the time frame wasn’t too ambitious. It was! The Caricom Heads of State decided in 2022, and gave the region just THREE years to achieve it!! Even JFK gave the US SEVEN years to reach the moon – from 1962 to the end of the decade. And for us to be cutting our US$6 billion food import bill is like reaching the moon!!
After all, from the moment Caricom was launched in 1973, it was ruefully acknowledged by all and sundry that we were importing too much food. And all the said Heads of Government – ironically abbreviated as “Caricom HOGS” – committed to doing what they could to reduce that bill. Reams of pages of analyses were produced to show how the departed colonialists had induced us into “foreign tastes” – like condensed milk and canned sardines!! – that we had to import and spend scarce foreign exchange on. But very little was done to show how we could actually produce our own food – save for talking about a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), but doing very little about it!!
But about two decades ago, then President Jagdeo came up with an eponymously named “Jagdeo Initiative” as a strategy for removing constraints to agricultural development in the Caribbean, so that we could feed ourselves. It built upon the old efforts to develop a CAP by getting concrete and identifying ten key “binding constraints” that mitigated against success. What happened, however, was that Jagdeo pointed out it was Guyana and Belize that had the land and farming personnel for agri, while other countries could remove other constraints, like finance and transportation etc.
Well, who tell him to say that!! Trinidad, which then had capital, immediately decided to set up its own “Mega Farms”, even though we were willing to give them land here!! Of course, their farms all collapsed; mainly because they weren’t doing it to produce food, but just to have an excuse not to have us develop — even though we had what the economists call a “comparative advantage”!! Ditto with those countries that would supply other needsbased on their circumstances.
What caused the failure was that old “dog in the manger” syndrome that we all learnt about during our British tutelage!!
Well, on this go-around, it looks like we will have to do it on our own; but, thank goodness, we now have the money, the land and the people!!
…new ground rules
Well, the world’s beginning to realise that whatever they may think about the new sheriff in town, there’s not much they can do about it!! Trump’s like a force of nature in an old boys’ club that was used to pretending they’re all equal just because they put their pants on one leg at a time!! Well, Trump’s invoking that old folk wisdom we learnt back in the day: that, in a rum shop, the folks stack the big bottles and the little bottles on different shelves because they’re valued differently!!
Trump’s showing the Europeans that since the US coughs up most of the moolah to fund their defence in NATO against Russia – which they insist is still THE enemy, he can now pretty much tell them that they have no clothes!! He’s willing to have Russia inside the tent pissing out, that outside pissing in!!
And he got the Ukraine rare earth minerals for which “Biden was throwing money around like it’s cotton candy”!!
…hospitality standards
Pressie says we’re gonna push our tourism potential. Well, one of his tourism honchos better get in touch with that hotel owner who assaulted that foreign guest who complained about rats in his room!!
