Many ordinary citizens admitted to being slightly or severely food ‘insecure’ in an opinion survey. More persons said that they were eating fewer meals with less-preferred foods. Given that ‘food security’ should mean that everyone, everywhere, always, has access to adequate and nutritious food, it is evident that the ‘food security’ of average families worsened since the pandemic in 2020.
The former President is of the opinion that the worst impact of food insecurity has been on the lives of vulnerable citizens − aged, hinterland and rural residents, single-female-headed families, poor and unemployed – who most need access to adequate and affordable food.
Mr. Granger cited evidence of the food insecurity of families during his programme – The Public Interest – as an example of the food crisis. The average prices of one kilogram – of banana, $600; cassava, $460; fish, $400; flour, $160; milk, $1,100; plantain, $440; rice, $220; sugar, $300; and sweet potato, $420 – are higher than a five-member family could afford. Such a family would need to spend about $150,000 monthly to buy sufficient nutritious food.
The former President expressed his expectation that the project – entitled Vision 25 x 2025 – would achieve its aim to reduce the Caribbean Region’s food import bill by 25 per cent by 2025. He reminded, however, that CARICOM’s quest for food security has a thirty-four-year record of non-fulfilment, starting with the promulgation of the Grand Anse Declaration in 1989 and including the ‘Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy’ and the Caribbean Community Agricultural Policy, among others.
Mr. Granger lamented the lapses of Guyana’s “Vision for Agriculture 2020: A National Strategy for Agriculture in Guyana, 2013-2020” − which never met its objectives and never reduced food prices for poor people. He expressed the opinion that food security policy should rest on five pillars – infrastructure (air, land, shipping, refrigeration and effective irrigation); timely information for farmers to avoid gluts and shortages and to penetrate foreign markets; innovation by increasing agri-production and agro-processing and infusing fruit and vegetables into homes; investment in farm-to-market roads and increments in actual, annual production of fruit and vegetables – all by 2025!
Average and poor families are far from being food secure, the former President said.
