Weekly Column

(With apologies to Bill Clinton)

What is going on at the Ministry of Finance? All the signs are there. The world is on the brink of an economic recession sparked by the $1,000 billion credit crisis in the United States and its impact on the financial markets. The OPEC cartel has refused to increase production as the Age of Oil squeezes to an inglorious end, drop by torturous drop. The hijacking of Middle America’s corn by the bio fuel industry coupled with high energy prices and the explosion in demand for commodities created by China and India has ironically fuelled its own crisis of surging food prices.

Everywhere we look the forecast is the same – a ‘perfect storm’ is building on the horizon. And not a word from either of our Ministers of Finance.

For a party that came to office on a platform of reducing the cost of living, the Democratic Labour Party Government has been remarkably silent since their display of braggadocio during the Estimates Debate.

Not a word from anyone, anywhere about any plan to tackle rising food prices. A lot of talk from the Minister of Commerce about building codes (even as cement prices rise again) while the Minister of Agriculture proudly asserts his prowess as a manager. What the people want to know are his plans to increase local food production. He has the lands of the BAMC at his disposal. The right word in the right ears can see all the cane fields now going into rotation being planted in sweet potatoes, yams, cassava, eddoes, carrots, and beets. Meanwhile his alter ego, Mr. James Paul is bombarding us, or is it him, with prescriptions to ensure our food security.

No less a person than the Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago recently announced his government’s plan to tackle rising food costs in a nationally televised address. He included a partnership with Guyana to increase regional food production on lands in that South American country.

Bajans will remember that, following a visit to Guyana in October 2007, Mia Mottley suggested that local farmers and entrepreneurs could take advantage of long lease holdings of agricultural land in for as low as US$5 per acre per year for food production. The Dems pooh-poohed the idea. Well the Trinis got the jump on us when we could have been reaping our first crops.

The fact is that the removal of the Common External Tariff is not enough on its own to absorb or offset the steep rise in extra-regional food imports. We have as a region to ensure our own food security, Trinidad and Guyana are on the right path, but Barbados needs to get into the game and fast.

With a 30 percent hike in the price of flour imminent and a 10 percent increase in the price of rice on the world market last Friday to an all-time high of US$850 a tonne, our dynamic duo in the Ministry of Finance have a perfect opportunity in their first Budget to show just how committed the Government is to sustainable food price reduction. They can divert the millions of dollars in subsidies on imported food to subsidies for local food production and to the establishment of a Wages Fund to cushion those in our society who are most vulnerable.

We cannot control the price of oil with all of its implications (especially higher food prices), but we must assume command over those things that we can control. Food in large measure is one of them. In the mid 1980s Barbados was a net exporter of vegetables. There is no reason why we cannot again assume a leading role in food production in the Eastern Caribbean, but we need a plan.

And, of course, the Dems would have to ask the public to ignore their ridiculing of Owen Arthur for encouraging Barbadians to start planting more of their own food!