Martin Henry, Contributor
Food security is a little more sophisticated than growing cassava to substitute for imported wheat and rice as world food prices soar, triggering riots in several countries.
The cartoonists are having a field day with the 'Cassava Plan'. And generally, their critique is more trenchant than any column or broadcast. It has to be, boiled down to a single panel or two which has to deliver the whole punch.
It is not the first time that a government is pushing import substitution for 'self-reliance' and food security. The Manley government of 1972-1980 had this as a central plank of democratic socialism, establishing collective food farms and a cassava factory in Goshen, St Elizabeth. It didn't work.
People, including the cartoonists, are saying Bruce Golding is uncannily like Michael Manley - in elements of manner, speech, and policy, and, certainly, in the matter of taking over portfolios deemed too important to be left in the hands of ordinary ministers. Why didn't the Manley food plan succeed? If Golding is going to succeed where Manley failed, it is important to have a reasonable answer to the question.
Jamaica has not been self-sufficient in food production from soon after Columbus appeared. Only the pre-Columbian Tainos achieved that. And their food production could only sustain a simple Stone Age culture.
A radical departure from virtually all of previous human history began roughly 300 years ago. It was the industrial/scientific production of food accompanied by a global food trade. Before that, people were really stuck with the now lightly-bandied-about political cry of growing what they eat and eating what they grow.
Suffering from own successes
Food surpluses, accompanied by progressively greater control of infectious diseases, powered up population growth. The system worked very well because of specialisation in production and a global food trade allowing distribution. Now, the whole thing, although never working perfectly, is suffering from its own incredible successes.
From FAO and World Bank Data it is calculated that of 148 low-income, lower-middle-income and upper-middle-income countries, 105 [71 per cent] are net food importers. The fact of the matter is that the world is fed by a handful of major food producers with large land areas and agricultural technology producing a few staples (mostly cereal grains) on which humanity, in the main, lives. Although there are over 50,000 edible plants, just three of them, rice, corn and wheat provide 60 per cent of the world's food-energy intake.
The Government's initial response to the food crisis was to pump $500 million of subsidy into the food trade "so as to cushion the impact of rising prices". That three-month intervention only managed to slow down - and very temporarily - the rate of price increase. The Government had to quickly 'back whey' from that strategy as it became obvious that big slices of the 'little-budget' could be eaten up without achieving price stabilisation.
Only an illusion
What is the Jamaican food situation? Jamaica simply does not have the arable land mass to feed close to three million people even at subsistence level of food intake, much more at today's opulent level, even for 'the poor'. But Jamaica was once the leading export sugar producer in the British Empire. Jamaica was once the leading export banana producer in the world before huge Latin American acreages came under cultivation. We have never achieved anywhere near mass production of any plant protein sources - and can't. The miracle of the modern scientific poultry industry has taken us far along the road to 'self-sufficiency' in a relatively cheap and affordable animal protein. But that is only an illusion. Virtually all the feed is imported from places that can grow grain cheaper! Our staples are rice, wheat and chicken. The rest is supplementary.
Guyana is the only CARICOM territory with the land mass/population match for attempting anywhere near self-sufficiency in food. Guyana is using the back door out of the agreement to supply us with rice, to the extent that Jamaica has applied to CARICOM for a waiver of the common external tariff agreement to allow us to buy non-CARICOM rice to feed our non-rice producing, rice eating population. Diplomatic niceties are preventing the public calling of a spade a spade by the Government: Guyana is positioning to benefit from the higher prices on the open world market. And we should position to get the lowest possible prices from wherever.
Self-serving behaviour
A great British statesman once said, "Britain has no eternal friends, only eternal interests." Food availability for the population has to be a fundamental interest of the Jamaican Government, not loyalty to CARICOM. The self-serving behaviour in clutches of member states with special high-demand resources like oil and gas, and rice, not only underscores the harsh realities of geopolitics but also the weakness in tiny same-products states banding together over sentiment more than economic or political reality.
Truly, free trade provides the best opportunity for obtaining needed goods and services at the lowest possible prices. And internally, Government should ruthlessly act to stamp out even the appearance of cartelisation aimed at keeping prices artificially higher than true market value.
Food security in the world of the last 300 years or so is not rooted in growing your own food but in being able to buy food on the world market from the sale proceeds of whatever you produce best. Rising food prices, in fact, provide a fertile opportunity for idle lands to be brought into production of those things which the world likes from us and for which it is willing to pay premium. Quite frankly, the land would be wasted on cassava, which, for cultural and economic reasons, is never likely to become a food staple, unless the Tainos are resurrected.
And as any poor household manager without any CXC passes will have the Government to know, a pound of dry flour from faraway is a far better food value buy than a pound of wet, low-protein cassava from St Elizabeth just 'round the corner, even if lower priced.
Another backhanded benefit of rising food prices will be an economics-driven shift from the more expensive high-fat and protein consumption to the consumption of lower-priced carbohydrates with Jamaican ground provision an excellent supplement, as always, to imported grain products, with enormous health benefits. There are opportunities in crises wisely handled.
Martin Henry is a communications consultant
