Director General Pascal Lamy today applauded the successful efforts of Latin American banana producing nations, the United States and the European Union to end their long running dispute over trade in bananas…
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KINGSTOWN, St Vincent, CMC – A senior banana official has blasted a new tariff agreement between the European Union (EU) and Latin America on the commodity as an ” act of treachery” and warned that it will bring on the demise of the industry in the Windward Islands and the rest of the Caribbean…. Coordinator of the Windward Islands Farmers Association (WINFA), Renwick Rose said the compensation being offered under the deal by the EU to countries of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) grouping was inadequate.
Historic agreement reached Banana Link
“A done deal” Renwick Rose, WINFA
Very interesting that there is no mention of ACP participation in the agreement; when they are among the most affected.
Norman
This was inevitable, coming as it did after the scuttling ofthe EU-ACP Sugar Protocol. What bothers me, as the post-sugar whining did, is why did the WI countries not prepare beforehand by diversifying their agro-production? Guyana and Belize can produce all the sugar we consume (and surplus to sell on the global market). Our focus should not be maintaining the mono-crop-culture we inherited from colonial days. It should be on producing more of what we eat, what with food being the biggest challenge facing the world (witness the acquisition of huge tracts of lands in Africa by countries like Korea, India, China).
In other words, we should have long shifted from sugar and bananas to rationalising what our nutrition (as distinct from food) requirements are. We should have a Caribbean Basin (not of the US-brand—our own) initiative to achieve this goal. Think of what we can achieve if all of Central America, coastal South America and the Caribbean were to joing in such effort. More corn and cassava flour to replace unhealthy wheat flour; more than adequate rice; banana transformed into all kinds of ‘fig’ (as we know them, especially plantain and moko) for food (imagine plantain chips replacing that ‘artificial, all-salt’ Pringles!); sundry root crops grown up the islands (not vulnerable to hurricanes, as bananas are) to supply the region with more and better carbohydrates; meats coming from free-range livestock farming in huge countries like Venezuela, Guyana, Central America–and so on.
Just as the region’s sugar industry went into shock when the EU axe fell, so too we are ‘bawling’ now over something that could have been predicted 20 years ago! We never learn. When we cut the colonial umbilical cord, did we do it only to descend into neo-colonialism? Will we ever be our ‘own men’ (and women)? Or shall we forever rely on ‘massa’ for handouts?
On a final note, all this raving over ‘high’ sugar prices is hot air. The current ‘high’ prices, which will not hold for long, hover around US 23 cents/lb. That is what the EU gave us under the preferential protocol–and T&T was among countries still losing big time! It is also what happened in 1974 when a spike occurred. When prices revert to below 10 cents, shall we cry blood? In any event, the only thing higher global sugar production and consumption will promote are disbetes and obesity! Is that where we want to go, given that we already rank among the highest in the world in these death-dealing conditions?
While I feel the hurt of the region’s banana cultivators, I think their response, and those of their governments, are backward-thinking. They should all see in this an opportunity to transform our food production into modes that are more suitable to our needs. The day of the mono-crop to feed ‘massa’ is over. Finally, why are we not manufacturing the best chocolate in the world when we grow the best cocoa in the world? Instead, we export beans to Cadbury’s et al…then buy their high-end bars and say: boy, dat is chocolate fadder!
Raffique