BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – The Caribbean Neighborhood (CARICOM) and the United Nations World Meals Programme say they may launch on Wednesday the outcomes of the eighth spherical of the Caribbean Meals Safety and Livelihoods survey.
Since 2020, the regional initiative has been monitoring the impacts of local weather shocks, financial uncertainty, and the rising price of residing on meals safety, livelihoods, and entry to important providers throughout the Caribbean.
The facilitators have famous that after going through successive crises and devastating pure hazards during the last years, many individuals within the Caribbean are struggling to earn a residing and meet their meals and different essential wants.
CARICOM) launched the Caribbean Meals Safety and Livelihoods Survey, applied by the World Meals Programme, to assemble information on individuals’s livelihoods, entry to markets and meals safety, and supply snapshots of those impacts over time.
Knowledge collected over six survey rounds spotlight the impression of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living disaster, and the impact of pure hazards on meals safety and livelihoods within the area. The survey features a dashboard that gives fast entry to the findings for all Caribbean international locations coated by the examine.
In the meantime, the St. Kitts-based Japanese Caribbean Central Financial institution (ECCB), has launched its findings for international locations of the Japanese Caribbean Foreign money Union (ECCU) after introducing a meals import invoice tracker with consolidated information on meals imports in response to the strikes by CARICOM member states in 2019 that deemed a 25 per cent discount within the 2019 worth of meals imports by 2025 was obligatory to assist obtain meals safety.
The ECCU teams the islands of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the British territories of Anguilla and Montserrat.
The meals import invoice tracker was aimed toward serving to policy-makers and the general public to trace progress regarding meals import dependency over time. The newest tracker exhibits rising import dependency. The 2023 traits affirm that the ECCU member international locations proceed to diverge from the goal.
The intention is to cut back the whole ECCU meals import invoice by 25 per cent to EC$1.3 billion (One EC greenback=US$0.37 cents) by 2025
Based on the ECCB, primarily based on the info as at December 2023, seven out of the eight member international locations imported extra meals in 2023, with meat, cereals, and fruits/greens accounting for 53 per cent of the whole meals imports.
It mentioned that elements affecting the worth of meals imports embody rising freight prices, local weather change, and worldwide disputes affecting delivery routes.
