#BTEditorial – Let’s put our eggs in more than one breadbasket in the Caribbean. Try Dominica.

Amid rising food prices, precarious supply chains, and an intensifying interest in our food and nutrition sovereignty for our relatively large population and limited land resources, Barbados must continue building strong trade and agricultural relationships within the Caribbean. If trade figures are any indication of a nation’s productive capacity, Barbados imported $662 million worth of food in 2019 while exporting only $129 million. With the best will in the world and every policy in the political arsenal, Barbados will never be able to feed itself entirely on its own. This does not however mean falling prostrate before the altar of the giant American food exporters and cheap, mass-produced food high in sugar, salt, and chemical additives and preservatives.

Barbados has been fortunate to have access to the breadbasket that is Guyana through intensified agreements on trade, investment and co-production. The 2022 St Barnabas Accord with Guyana is undoubtedly a significant step towards fostering agricultural development and self-sustainability. Even amid cynical doubting Thomases, Guyanese farmers and processors have been quietly building alliances with Barbadian importers. Nonetheless, in the pursuit of a diversified and resilient economy, it is imperative for the administration to expand its agricultural trade horizons yet further.

Dominica has suffered dramatically from the devastating impact of Hurricane Maria in 2017, which destroyed most of its agricultural sector and infrastructure. The country also lost one of its major sources of income and employment when Ross University relocated from Dominica to Barbados in 2018. While it has been a boon for Barbados, creating jobs and stimulating economic growth, the relocation has left a huge void in Dominica’s educational and economic landscape. Dominica needs investment and assistance to close that yawning chasm, and Barbados can play a better role in that process. By increasing our trade in agriculture with Dominica, we can help them recover their productive capacity and create new opportunities for both countries. Moreover, we can benefit from their rich and diverse agricultural products, beyond bananas, including pineapple, citrus, cocoa, coffee, and spices. Dominica has already developed its poultry industry with Barbadian egg producers. But Hurricane Maria has wiped out the potentially lucrative mountain coffee trade, blowing it back to cottage industry status. Here is where a joint venture can be a win-win for Barbados and Dominica.

The Observatory of Economic Complexity, an increasingly valuable analytical tool in development economics, reports that Dominica exported $29 million worth of agricultural products in 2019, while Barbados imported only $1 million from Dominica. This lopsided picture is a sufficient indication of the potential for increasing trade between the two CARICOM sister nations.

Any drive through the length of Dominica reveals the extraordinary yet typical resilience of the people of the Nature Isle as they rebuild lives and livelihoods that were scarred, shattered and scattered by Dominica’s worst natural disaster – in a nation that over the last 40 years has been visited by no fewer than 17 hurricanes and tropical storms since 1980, to say nothing of countless landslides and floods. Dominicans have been working with characteristic determination to rebuild their economy. By engaging in intensified agricultural trade with Dominica, Barbados can extend a hand up, not handout, to a neighbour in a manner that would add renewed lustre to next month’s golden jubilee of the CARICOM Treaty. We advocate for a formalised, mutually beneficial partnership that would not only provide economic stability to Dominica but also foster regional solidarity.

Indeed, strengthening bilateral trade ties with fellow CARICOM member states, reaching beyond the plains and paddies of Guyana into the orchards of Belize, the cocoa and spice-laden hills of Grenada, and the lush, green valleys of our nearest neighbour, St Vincent, would actually enhance, not threaten, regional integration. It would also strengthen regional food and nutritional sovereignty and resilience. This is how we can demonstrate our commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which call for ending hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition, promoting sustainable agriculture, and fostering partnerships for development.

None of these bilateral agreements harms our national interest in building and strengthening Barbadian farmers and food processing, not if the partnerships are smart, inclusive and fairly administered.

Mindful of the need for a counterpart regional transport framework for the skies and seas, we urge Barbados’ pursuit of a more active and comprehensive trade policy with Dominica while maintaining our existing relations with Guyana and other breadbaskets of the region.