Significant progress in Guyana-led food initiative – Mustapha

During this year’s Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED), Ministers of Agriculture from across the Caribbean have endorsed the ‘25 by 2025 + 5’ Implementation Plan, which forms part of CARICOM’s Agri-Food Systems Strategy, commonly known as the Vision 25 by 2025 Initiative.

Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha, who serves as Chairman of the CARICOM Special Ministerial Taskforce on Food Production and Food Security (MTF), told the gathering of regional officials that the first phase of the initiative has clearly demonstrated what the region can achieve when working together to achieve a common goal. He explained that despite the challenges of climate change, rising input costs, and global market shocks, CARICOM nations have recorded significant progress.

“At the regional level, the data shows, there has been increasingly stronger growth year-on-year for the achievement rate of our production targets we had set ourselves for 2025 (in 2022, the region’s achievement rate was 57%, in 2023 it was 70% and 2024 it was 82%), giving an overall growth in production of 23.1% between 2022 to 2024. In fact, accelerated production growth has been achieved with 8.9% and 13% registered between 2022 -2023 and 2023 – 2024 respectively,” he explained.

Minister Mustapha also said the extension of the initiative to 2030 gives the region an opportunity to consolidate its gains, scale up production, and deepen regional cooperation.

“Under 25 by 2025+5, we are collectively targeting 4.3 million tonnes of regional food production by 2030. This planned sustained expansion in regional production, will directly contribute to the region’s programme of reducing the regional food import bill, scaling up capacity for tapping in to intra-regional trade opportunities, and improving technical cooperation across CARICOM,” the Minister noted.

Furthermore, while speaking on local targets, Minister Mustapha urged Member States to recognize that the success of the initiative was heavily dependent on meaningful partnerships as well as the removal of barriers to intra-regional trade and the strengthening of other systems and providing meaningful support for food producers.

“For Guyana, we are fully committed to playing a leading role. Our national targets for 2030 include more than one million tonnes of rice, nearly half a million tonnes of vegetables, 300,000 tonnes of coconut, and over 100,000 tonnes of poultry. We are also scaling up production of corn, soy, root crops, ginger, turmeric, fruits, honey, and fisheries. These targets are ambitious, but they reflect our determination to ensure that Guyana serves as a reliable hub for regional food supply, processing, and distribution. At the same time, we recognize that success will depend on partnerships. We must continue to engage the regional private sector, international partners, and the diplomatic community to mobilize investment, unlock new markets, and build the technical capacity of our farmers and agri–businesses. Just as important is the removal of barriers to intra-regional trade, the strengthening of our transport and logistics systems, and the provision of financing and fiscal support to our producers,” he explained.

During discussions, Regional Officials highlighted that while import volumes have reduced, global prices have increased, adding that the strategy should be revised to reflect regional and global realities.

They also praised H.E. President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali and Minister Mustapha for their visionary leadership in driving the Food Security Agenda in CARICOM. While highlighting Guyana’s momentous achievement of being the only country in the world with the ability to feed it’s population, the officials touted Guyana as a model for agricultural diversification and resilience.

The Agri-Food Systems Strategy, primarily implemented to reduce the region’s food import by 25% by the end of 2025 by giving special attention to priority crops and products such as poultry, corn, soya, meat such as goat, sheep, and beef, rice and niche vegetables which are highly imported products in the region was extended to 2030 after several countries’ agriculture sectors were affected by natural disasters (Ministry of Agriculture press release)