CEO of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS), James Paul (centre), speaks during the launch of a farmers’ training programme while President of the BAS, Woodville Jones (left); and Vice-president of the Barbados Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association, Trevor Bostic, listen on.
BAS CEO: International agreements hurting sector
Several of the international agreements Barbados has signed onto are hindering, rather than helping the agricultural industry.
“We signed some agreements in the past that are hurting us,” said Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS), James Paul, pointing specifically to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the Economic Partnership Agreements.
“What those agreements have done is constrained the ability of governments to protect sectors which are vulnerable. The agricultural sector is vulnerable. The United States signed the WTO agreement, but in it what they ensured is that they protected their agricultural sector; the Europeans did the same thing; the Japanese protected their rice industry. (However,) the Caribbean is the only set of governments that had this mad intuition that we could actually go and sign an agreement that basically undermines the ability of Government to protect the very sector that is key to preserving the health of those individual countries and not only that, we are bound by certain things that even look at reductions further,” he told members of the media yesterday at BAS headquarters.
Paul insisted that it was time to look at renegotiating these agreements for the benefit of these industries.
He made the comments while expressing his hopes for today’s presentation of the budgetary proposals for the next financial year, the BAS head said it was time to see a higher level of facilitation.
“Anyone who says that the agricultural sector has been given pride of place by any Government in the past will be lying. We have received in many cases more mouthing than anything else and I think that is unfortunate. I think that at a time when Barbados desperately needs to earn its way in the world, the agricultural sector is the correct sector to help Barbados reclaim its economic independence, to reclaim its food sovereignty and to show that it can make an active contribution to food security in this country, providing Barbadians with the food that is healthy, that would avoid them having to go and pay huge bills at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and other doctors and I think the agricultural sector has to be given the opportunity to that extent,” he said.