Carl Greenidge

Director
Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation
The Netherlands

Perspective

Challenges facing island agriculture

Carl Greenidge, Director of the CTA, former Secretary General, ad interim, of the ACP Group following a spell as one of the Caribbean's longest serving Ministers of Finance, highlights some of the constraints facing small states in the drive for liberalised international trade relations and reflects on some of the positive developments and their implications for agriculture's future prospects.

In many ways, the challenges faced by the small countries of the Caribbean, Pacific and the Indian Ocean are the same as those of Africa and Asia: difficulties of accessing external markets, meeting the conditions imposed by trade rules, and the many problems associated with gender and smallholder farming. However, the key challenge for many of these mainly island countries is that they depend far too heavily on a narrow range of commodities, many of which are not basic staples and for which there is a limited market regardless of how cheaply they can be produced. Today, commodities like sugar and bananas are simply not very rewarding in the global market, and if farmers want to make a profit, they will have to change what they are doing.

One option is to grow new crops for which prices are buoyant and demand is increasing, as is the case with certain vegetables and fruits, some exotic varieties of fish, wood and leather products and cut flowers. Indeed, some farmers are already doing well from these products, and their exports, for example to the EU, have increased significantly over the last ten years. However, many farmers will tell you that it is too difficult to change from a crop that they have always grown. For them, the alternative would be to add value to their existing produce by processing and niche marketing, thereby taking advantage of the idiosyncrasies and preferences of consumers. But, for most producers this will be impossible without training; they need to learn how to read market trends, and how to adapt to changes in those trends. They also need to learn how to meet quality and health standards as a matter of routine. This means that Governments, farmers' associations and Chambers of Commerce and the like will need to put substantial resources into education and training. In this way managers will be equipped to look for opportunities and take advantage of those opportunities where and whenever they find them.

At the moment there is not enough being done by way of such investment. In the context of the liberalisation of the international trade regime our governments often appear to believe that the EU will solve their problems. In reality, every country needs to make a careful study of their own competitiveness and devise strategies that address their own deficiencies. These might involve seeking to ensure that the EU takes account of the particular products in which they have a potential for export and those for which they are likely to suffer social problems if EU exports under the proposed trading regime displace local producers. Temporary measures may be needed to protect them in those areas in which they are vulnerable. The only long term solution would be however to invest resources and encourage others to invest in those areas where there is a potential for competitive export and domestic production. However, work on identifying such areas and their needs as regards how to ensure competitiveness is not being done in any explicit way. In the case of the Caribbean, CARICOM and the RNM (Regional Negotiating Mechanism), have been charged with negotiating Caribbean trade interests. Unfortunately, the essentials of the policy have to be based on national analysis and needs. One cannot fashion a regional policy without first having looked at the specifics at the individual countries and their industries.

One reason for the lack of urgency among our governments in undertaking this kind of work is their belief that other existing export markets, such as tourism, can cushion them from the problems caused by their troubled agricultural sectors. However, these services are often unpredictable; they tend to be prone to slumps as a result of factors that lie outside our borders and our control, as the fall in US tourism post-September 11th demonstrates all too starkly.

Looking on the positive side, we can see progress being made in some important areas. Caribbean and Pacific countries have struggled because of their isolation; the communication and infrastructure difficulties associated with such isolation lead to unduly heavy transaction costs for both small producers and small economies. However, developments on the information and communication technology (ICT) front now offer the opportunity to minimise these difficulties, and much progress has already been made in the ICT sphere in the Caribbean due to the quality of the region's education and the state of telecommunications infrastructure.

Another area where I think we can be optimistic is the increasingly constructive role being played by civil society in our economies. I am not simply jumping on a bandwagon here. I do think that in the context of the Lomé institutions we sometimes have unrealistic expectations of civil society and its role in actually implementing policy and correcting fundamental problems. But what I can see is a constructive role in debating policies of all types - economic and financial as well as social. The quality of these debates and the informed nature of the interventions is what makes a difference and what can ensure that the process is constructive. Within the ACP countries, southern Africa provides some outstanding examples of this process at work where various groupings of civil society are engaged in public debate that is informing policy-making and ensuring that policy-makers actually consider a range of dimensions before they take decisions.

This may, indeed often does, make the process more complicated for the decision maker, but I think it is important in ensuring that decisions are sustainable in the sense of being non-reversible. Once people feel reasonably satisfied that there has been a wide airing of issues, and that their government has managed to take into account a range of conflicting positions before arriving at a decision, then the public is more likely to accept burdens that may be associated with such decisions. Similarly, when there are changes in government, new governments coming into office are more likely to accept what has gone before, rather than overturning policies on the grounds that they were not widely enough discussed or were not acceptable to enough of the electorate. In this sense there is a lot of reason for optimism; for example, the analytical capacity and effectiveness of civil organisations in the Caribbean region with a development interest, while varying from country to country, is generally improving .

Returning to agriculture, and its role in our future prosperity, there has of course been a worrying flight of young people out of the sector, and whether there will be enough young farmers ready to take agriculture forward in the ways that I have indicated remains to be seen. Many of those who have remained do not appear interested enough in developing the new skills needed, and are not being given the incentive to do so by their governments. The investment in technological change and information dissemination in the agricultural sector remains too low with too many national institutions involved in duplicating work conducted by regional bodies or better conducted on a regional basis. There is inadequate specialisation. However, it is also true that one impact of globalisation has been insecurity in public sector employment and growing risk in salaried employment. In many countries this situation is forcing young people to look again at what opportunities there may be in agriculture, albeit in different areas from those which their forebears experienced in the past. If our governments could step in and support such searches with training and education paying particular attention to the marketing, quality control and information management skills required by the buoyant sectors, they would be taking an important step towards a profitable and stable agricultural sector.

One of the challenges of civil society would be to help to keep the importance of these links (between youth and imaginative agricultural policies) in the forefront of the public debate on poverty and trade policies and on liberalisation and targeted investment and expenditure policies. Youths are important in the future of agriculture and a vibrant agricultural sector is crucial in securing a buoyant economic future for our small, island economies.

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