CARICOM

“The time for action is now.”

Remarks by Dr. Patrick Antoine, CEO of the CARICOM Private Sector Organization at the Launch of the 20th Caribbean Week of Agriculture  2026. CWA 2026 is scheduled to be held in Jamaica from September 27th to October 2nd, 2026 under the theme ‘The New F.A.C.E of Caribbean Food Systems.’

SALUTATIONs

I bring greetings on behalf of the CARICOM Private Sector Organization.  

For us at the CPSO, this twentieth convening of the Caribbean Week of Agriculture is a major milestone and offers yet another excellent opportunity for stock-taking, and for planning and planting new seeds of sustainability, seeds of growth, seeds of resilience for our Region’s agri-food system.

Personally, I have come to value the courage of stepping out in faith and planting new seeds. More than twenty years ago, as part of the IICA Caribbean Team, we conceived and launched the first Caribbean Week of Agriculture, hoping only that it would bear fruit for years to come—and it has continued to do so.

I have been privileged to witness its evolution—from its earliest, modest beginnings to the robust regional platform it represents today. What began as a meaningful, humble gathering has now grown into one of the most substantive engagements on the regional agricultural calendar, a testament to the institutions- all of you, all of them- behind it and to the pressing issues it so courageously addresses.

But what I want to dwell on this afternoon is not the history of the CWA, but the significant weight and meaning that this convening carries at this moment.

CWA 2026 arrives at a pivotal moment. I acknowledge the comments and contexts are framed by the distinguished Director General of IICA,  And we endorse them.

As the Region steps into the second phase, this Plus Five Phase of the 25 by 2025 initiative, we carry forward the record of Phase I. That early work did more than advance a plan: it positioned food and nutritional security at the heart of regional resilience, trade balances, balance of payments, and economic integration. Phase I also emphasized the urgency needed to propel the Region’s agricultural sector forward and the opportunities to do so. Indeed, you will no doubt recall the CPSO’s work identified 125 clear agrifood opportunities among the 755 most frequently traded products within the CSME.

Accordingly, the central question before us today is no longer whether food security warrants priority attention.

That argument has been made and won.

Now, the more difficult question is whether the Region is organizing itself—through investments, market structure, logistics, policy coherence, and enterprise development—to actually close the gap between what we import and what we are capable of producing, processing, and trading regionally and extra-regionally. That is the task before us.

We have learned in Phase One that production volumes alone is not a sufficient measure of progress.

The Region must also assess value creation, redouble our actions at reducing the extra-regional food import bill, concretely so, intensify the focus on  market penetration, and the extent to which the economic value generated by food systems is maximized within the CSME and beyond.

There are honest questions we must confront in this assessment of Phase One and learning and lessons of Phase One as we move into Phase Two.

• For instance, where Phase One identified the priority commodities and value chains, and we have focused well on some, did those opportunities translate into real production in all Member States?
• How did we perform on real trade flows?
• How did we perform on private sector investment?
• How did we perform in growing and expanding our agrifood market share within the Community?

And where uptake of these opportunities have not delivered on the promise of the opportunities, what explains it? Was it logistics? Was it access to capital? Was it scale constraints? Standards and certification barriers? Was it price competitiveness? Or was it policy inconsistency?

Moreover, was it a combination of gaps across the value chain that made otherwise viable opportunities commercially unattractive?

These are precisely the questions that will determine whether the next phase of the regional agenda—’the Plus 5 Phase’ of this regional agenda—achieves the outcomes we are collectively seeking.

In all this, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, we applaud the work of the Special Ministerial Task Force on Food Security and Food Production led by the Honourable Minister Zulfikar Mustapha.

The CPSO believes that this Phase Two- this Plus 5 Phase- must be data driven, must be driven by evidence in agriculture, in technology, on markets. It must be science grounded with more focused support to agrifood entrepreneurs, including MSMEs, by providing them with greater emphasis on the keys to success of their business, including providing the enabling policy environment for them to achieve growth.

Food security is as much a market-fulfillment challenge as a production challenge. The Region must be able to supply more of what we consume, to process more of what we produce, and to add greater value and  trade products efficiently across borders.

In this regard, we have to make substantial progress in reducing intraregional barriers which exist in agrifood trade among ourselves.

Achieving these objectives requires some shifts in our institutions and greater emphasis on commercial infrastructure, and on mobilizing private capital.

Private capital feeds on clarity. It feeds on structure.

Attracting private sector investment into agriculture and food systems, requires that the investment opportunities are well defined, and the investment environment credible. This requires an even greater  shift from broad appeals to precise investment business cases—targeted value chains, defined processing opportunities, and clear logistics and technology support where the needs exist, viable market pathways, and a realistic view of what motivates to farmers, if not high returns to capital. Only with that clarity will investors—domestic, regional, or international— feel confident to commit even more in Phase Two than the commitments undertaken in Phase One.

This is where CWA 2026 has real potential to differentiate itself. This Caribbean Week of Agriculture can serve as a regional accountability and action mechanism—a space in which the Region can engage in evidence -based and dispassionate assessment of the true status of the extra-regional food import reduction agenda, identifying gaps and transforming the opportunities which still exist into bankable, measurable ‘wins’ for our Community.

A practical contribution is to ground CWA’s discussions in a current status of the Region’s food systems— to identify where progress has been achieved, where constraints persist, and where targeted interventions will have the greatest impact. This foundation will sharpen the Caribbean Week of Agriculture’s outcomes and link what are always excellent engagements to concrete follow-up actions.

The CPSO is committed to this process. We are committed to working with the CARICOM Secretariat, with Member States, regional institutions and development partners such as IICA and FAO, and other private sector players across the Community. Transforming regional ambition into commercially structured and measurable outcomes must remain our focus.

This brings me to the theme of CWA 2026.

The theme “The New Face of Caribbean Food Systems” describes, in four pillars, the integrated approach the Region now needs:

• Food Security,
• Agri-Business,
• Climate-Smart Technologies, and,
• Export Expansion.

These priorities are mutually reinforcing and deliver results, but only when they are pursued together.

About the ‘F’– History shows that food security pursued without commercial discipline may not be security at all; often times it becomes vulnerability in waiting.

About the ‘A’ – Agri-business, properly developed, becomes a driver of regional value creation rather than merely a productive category.

About the ‘C’ – Climate-smart technologies must rapidly shift from pilot and demonstration into mainstream adoption at scale, for that is the only level at which the change that our economies require will be achieved.  

And the ‘E’ – Export expansion requires genuine competitiveness, reliable supply, and strong market intelligence to sustain it over time.

The Region does require a new ’FACE’ for its food systems—one that is more accountable, more investment-ready, more market-oriented, and more regionally integrated.

The CPSO looks forward to CWA 2026 fulfilling the role that it was conceived to play – the role as a platform where real production, real trade, real investment, and real market shares are not merely aspirations but are rational expectations pursued with structure, vigor and commitment.

The measure of the upcoming 20^th CWA in Jamaica, must not only be the quality of the engagements, indeed as you all know we have no doubt that they will be substantial and substantive.

The true measure will be whether the CWA takes the Region meaningfully closer to a targeted response of reducing extra-regional food imports, of strengthening regional value chains and regional sourcing, of fostering greater agrifood enterprise viability, and advancing the construction of an agri-food economy that works better for Caribbean people and Caribbean businesses.

Colleagues, this is the opportunity and the task that FACEs us. The time for action is now. Let us get to work.

Thank You.