CARICOM Agriculture

The native people of the Caribbean region - the various tribes of Amerindians - produced and consumed their own foods. The father was the hunter, and the gatherer of meat, fish and berries, the mother was the farmer, and with the help of her children produced such items as corn, and cassava. They lived a somewhat nomadic life.

The opportunity for improvement occurred when the native people started to rear livestock and poultry and to cultivate permanent crops.e.g. breadfruit and coconut. Their lives took on a greater degree of permanence as social and economic relationships within the family solidified.

The father remained the gatherer of food. The wife intensified her involvement in farming, The daughters worked at homecraft, while the sons became carpenters and boat builders.
The new economic and social infrastructure encouraged greater production and productivity and this in turn provided opportunities for their communities to grow and improve. All that was needed was a catalyst to initiate and sustain economic growth and development.

At this juncture, the European planters landed in the Caribbean and completely changed the lives of the native people. They destroyed their food production system and introduced in its place their plantation system of agriculture.

The European planters seized the best lands on which they produced a narrow range of field crops, including sugar, banana, cotton and indigo which were exported for processing in their metropolitan cities. Plantation agriculture in the Caribbean was provided with all the needed inputs - capital for infrastructure, good shipping facilities, guarantee markets, and importantly, labor from slave and indentured workers at minimal cost.

It cannot be denied, however, that this form of agriculture, while providing immence wealth for the European owners, made significant contribution to the region's development especially in the areas of employment,earning of foreign exchange and in its contribution to Gross Domestic Product.

During the last three decades, however, there has been a catastropic decline in the contribution of plantation agriculture to the social and economic development of the CARICOM region. Of even greater concern is that there seems no immediate prospects for improvement. The situation has grown so critical that there is now a need and urgency for change.

The proposed strategy for recovery include the following:

  1. Comprehensive land reform, including transfer from the plantation to the indigenous sub-sector
  2. Identification and elimination of external exploitation
  3. Development/ implementation of the Regional Food and Nutrition Strategy (RFNS) with an emphasis on both import substitution and export promotion.
  4. Application of appropriate technology and
  5. Optimum industrialization of the agriculture sector.