One reply on “VIDEO: CARICOM beefing up food security”
Lostpet says:
Climate Change is causing many challenges to us farmers. Unfortunately the government in SVG does nothing about it, nothing but talk. Sabota Caesar once mentioned constructing small dams….where are they? That is not one of Ralph’s 15 points. We need these as reservoirs so farmers can store water to off-set the effects of droughts.
Of course the reason why we import so much food is because it is soooo expensive to grow and process food here in the Caribbean. Hans King once wrote that agro-processors get duty-free in SVG…What a lie! I am an agro-processor and I know many others. the only processors I know that get duty-free are bee-keepers.
To try to get duty-free a processor first has to submit lots of paperwork and spend months running it around town to various departments for approval, possibly Cabinet, THEN, 99 times out of 100 you will get a 50% concession (after losing lots of money in man-hours running the paperwork around town). Well, guess what?…. 50% off of way way, way, way, way, too much is still way, way, too much! Most other countries give duty-free on agro-processing as a LAW!…AUTOMATICALLY! Not in SVG. Here it depends on how thick your wallet is and what political party you support, then…maybe you will get the 95% (the maximum) off.
SVG will always be a country that does not process its own food because the government is not serious about agro-processing.
SVG will continue to fail in Agriculture because in order to boost this sector the government has to give incentives for people to farm. To do that they mainly have to give incentives to agro-process. IF IT IS NOT PROFITABLE, PEOPLE WILL NOT DO IT! As long as the SVG government continues to be tax-greedy we will continue to go no where. […]
Climate Change is causing many challenges to us farmers. Unfortunately the government in SVG does nothing about it, nothing but talk. Sabota Caesar once mentioned constructing small dams….where are they? That is not one of Ralph’s 15 points. We need these as reservoirs so farmers can store water to off-set the effects of droughts.
Of course the reason why we import so much food is because it is soooo expensive to grow and process food here in the Caribbean. Hans King once wrote that agro-processors get duty-free in SVG…What a lie! I am an agro-processor and I know many others. the only processors I know that get duty-free are bee-keepers.
To try to get duty-free a processor first has to submit lots of paperwork and spend months running it around town to various departments for approval, possibly Cabinet, THEN, 99 times out of 100 you will get a 50% concession (after losing lots of money in man-hours running the paperwork around town). Well, guess what?…. 50% off of way way, way, way, way, too much is still way, way, too much! Most other countries give duty-free on agro-processing as a LAW!…AUTOMATICALLY! Not in SVG. Here it depends on how thick your wallet is and what political party you support, then…maybe you will get the 95% (the maximum) off.
SVG will always be a country that does not process its own food because the government is not serious about agro-processing.
SVG will continue to fail in Agriculture because in order to boost this sector the government has to give incentives for people to farm. To do that they mainly have to give incentives to agro-process. IF IT IS NOT PROFITABLE, PEOPLE WILL NOT DO IT! As long as the SVG government continues to be tax-greedy we will continue to go no where. […]