Honorable Ministers of Government,
Prof. Sir Hilary Beckles, Principal of the Cave Hill Campus,
Prof. Chandra Madramootoo, key note speaker,
Ambassador Michael King, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture,
Representatives, faculty and students from the University of the West Indies,
Representatives of the Diplomatic Community,
Representatives of international and regional organizations,
Stakeholders and experts,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is always a pleasure to join you in beautiful Barbados. This conference is especially important to the OAS since it’s a priority not just for Barbados, but for the sub region and much of the Americas as a whole.

Now before I continue, I want to thank each of you for being here this morning…since I understand that many of you may actually be in need of some rest. To me, having this food security conference follow Kadooment is a natural progression…since after one celebrates, one must have a secure food source, to fully recover.

Over the next two days, your discussions and presentations will specifically focus on the issue of Food Security in Barbados and the implications for economic development and job creation. I applaud the government of Barbados and the organizers for this conference, since I believe quite frankly that on an individual level, we must make greater efforts to facilitate more country-specific, targeted initiatives, in addition to broad consensus agreements.

Food security has become one of the most actionable items of this era. It has been raised at almost every high profile meeting and conference over the past few years, including the OAS General Assembly in Bolivia last year and even the Summit of the Americas four years ago in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago. But having flagged this issue as a priority, we can ask ourselves "what progress have we made in becoming more food secure?"

For over ten years stakeholders have been calling for a fundamentally different approach to domestic agriculture, pleading for budget priority, more investment and better partnerships. Five years ago at a regional agriculture investment forum in Guyana, there was a commitment to effect a fundamental transformation of the agricultural sector within the Community by diversifying agricultural production, intensifying and expanding agri-business.

Around that same time, also five years ago, a report on Caribbean Opportunities in Agri-business identified “key resistors” to the growth of this sector as including a lack entrepreneurship, misdirected support, ageing farmers, severe weather events and antiquated practices. With this information in hand, have we made enough progress?
There have been small and sporadic pockets of success in individual countries. Many governments of the region have moved to incentivize the agricultural sector and encouraged local consumption drives. Right here in Barbados we have seen private sector interventions, like the donation of land to the University of the West Indies Cave Hill by Eddie Edghill for training and research in Agriculture to attract a younger generation of producers. However, in the face of worrying trends in the region over the past decades, I believe that individually and collectively, we can and we must do more !

The contribution of agriculture to GDP in the Caribbean dropped significantly from the 70’s to the early 2000’s. At the same time, there has been an exorbitant increase in our food import bill, now hovering around 4 billion US dollars. Frankly speaking, this is worrisome, since it means that we do not have direct control over a significant percentage of our food supply, and we are becoming increasingly vulnerable to every change or disruption in external production, output and supply from foreign sources.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is literally a bread and butter issue. Right here in Barbados food prices are rising, and the food import bill I understand is now over 653 million BBD. Some of the experts here today have produced reports which also tell us that Barbados is only producing about 25% of its food requirements.

At the OAS we have witnessed the direct link between food security, development, poverty and even stability in many countries. It is easy for us to sometimes feel removed from the reality of people living in hunger. Yet the FAO says there are approximately 53 million people in Latin America and right here in the Caribbean who go hungry every day. Many believe there is no morally justifiable reason for the persistence of hunger in a hemisphere like ours. But these numbers are painful evidence that the issue of food security has not been adequately addressed. We are not as far removed from this issue as we would like to think.

The Caribbean feels its own frailty with the passage of each hurricane or extreme weather event. Discussions on climate change have produced models which are ominous, showing the potential impact of sea level rise on both our coastal areas and our farm lands. Are we innovating, being proactive or forward thinking in our food security policies?

Yesterday I had a conversation with Foreign Minister Maxine McClean and she raised the issue of transportation for our produce. If we are generating food supplies and exploring potential markets, have we adequately addressed long outstanding export and transport challenges? If we are to move to create new paths to food security, old problems must be solved.

Far too often, we are more reactive than proactive. We have all heard the phrase "we'll cross that bridge when we meet it." This perhaps is at the root of why many of us have not actively pursued the prospects of food security as it relates to economic diversification. While many of our economies are largely based on services, tourism, exports and energy for the fortunate few, food production and food security has not consumed our attention, to the degree it should. Ladies and gentlemen, the bridge is in front of us, and we must cross it, now. We must re-invest in institutions; we must take charge with determination and re-build our agricultural tradition and this time on our own terms.

I hesitate sometimes and wonder whether the stigma of our colonial past has affected our reasoning and judgment about safeguarding future, with the promotion of agricultural entrepreneurship. I hope that the region has progressed enough to realize that if we fail to address the issue of food security, we may one day have to confront the question of food dependency.

Before I close I want to share with you the example of Brazil, a large country with matching challenges. Yet, through deliberate action and intention, Brazil was able to change its course on the issue of food security. Over the last decade, Brazil reduced the proportion of hungry people by one third, lifted 24 million people out of extreme poverty and cut malnutrition by 25 percent. Over that same period its gross domestic product (GDP) more than tripled. Brazil, a WFP beneficiary country in the 1990s, became it's tenth largest donor by last year. Brazil achieved this by committing to programs to eradicate hunger and increase food production. If Brazil can do this with a population of over 190 million people, surely there is hope and potential for us on a much smaller scale.

Ladies and gentlemen, changing trade relations, climate change, global commodity prices, and economic uncertainty will continue to challenge us in the future. Again we can ask ourselves "Will we be prepared?"
The organizers of this conference and in particular Dr. Chelston Braithwaite are to be commended for their foresight, vision and commitment to addressing this issue and keeping it on the agenda.

The OAS believes in this initiative and in keeping with the declaration of Cochabamba on Food security, and we give you our full support.

We must address this issue with urgency and with clarity, understanding where we are, and what we stand to gain .... or to loose.

I thank you and I look forward to the results and recommendations of this national conference.