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Promoting CARICOM/CARIFORUM Food Security

The Project “Promoting CARICOM/CARIFORUM Food Security”has been approved. This is the first project to be approved under Italian contribution to the FAO Trust Fund for Food Security and Food Safety.

The World Food Summit, held in November 1996, established the goal to reduce to half the number of hungry people in the world by 2015. In order to help in the achievement of this goal, FAO created a Trust Fund for Food Security and Food Safety with a total amount of US$ 500 millions. The first Government to support this initiative has been Italy with a commitment of US$ 100 millions. This support is mainly addressed at the strengthening and sustainability of FAO’s Special Programme for Food Security (SPFS) Projects, especially at regional level.

The Caribbean countries were elected as the first priority. In 2001, FAO supported the preparation of the Caribbean Region Special Programme for Food Security (CRSPFS) in response to a request from the 15 CARIFORUM countries in the region. It was decided that US$ 5 millions of the Italian Government contribution to the FAO Trust Fund for Food Security and Food Safety would be used to support a Food Security project in the CARIFORUM countries.

In January 2003, a mission of FAO officers and representatives of the Italian Government, formulated a draft Project document “Promoting CARICOM/CARIFORUM Food Security”. The main purpose of this project is to promote and increase food security at community and household level, establishing the necessary capacity to deal with issues directly related to nutrition improvement, income increase, improvement of trade opportunities, within a policy environment which promotes the sustainable achievement of food security.

The Project should be declared operational in May 2003 with a time period of three years. It has two components, to be coordinated and implemented at community, regional and national level:

(i) Strengthening of the policy and services formulation and planning capacities in the different regional, national and community institutions and organizations, working for the promotion of food security in the region.

(ii) The enhancement of production and marketing systems for small community agricultural producers suffering food insecurity. This shall be attained with technical backstopping, training activities and equipment.

It is foreseen that the Project will generate social and economic benefits with the increase in food security, especially at household level in rural communities of the CARIFORUM countries, above all for small farmers, small traders and their families, and for rural landless agricultural workers. It would also contribute to strengthen the policy, planning and services fields to assure dynamism, efficiency and sustainability of the agricultural production and marketing sectors.

The Project would also go in direct benefit of public sector institutions of various countries in the CARIFORUM group, allowing them to enhance their technological and technical capacities in respect to the characteristics of the qualified human resources and the improvement of infrastructure and equipment, both at regional as well as at national and community level.

Total contribution of the Government of Italy to the regional Project for food security is US$ 5 millions.

The Project was signed by FAO Assistant Director-General, the Undersecretary of Exterior Relations of Italy and the Assistant Secretary-General of CARICOM at a special ceremony on 21 March 2003 during the Board Meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank in Milan, Italy.