CWA 2026 Attracts Largest Turnout In 20 Years

This year’s staging of CARICOM’s Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) has attracted the largest turnout yet in the event’s 20-year history.

Spearheaded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining, the event is being held at the Ocean Coral Spring Resort in Trelawny, from September 27 to October 2, under the theme ‘The New FACE of Caribbean Food Systems’.

Assistant Secretary General for Economic Integration, Innovation and Development at the CARICOM Secretariat, Dr. Wendell Samuel, said this year’s event has more than 800 participants.

“This is the largest staging of the CWA. Last year in St. Kitts there were about 500 to 600 people and each year it grows bigger and bigger and there is a reason for that. Value has been created by having the CWA. We are bringing people together to do things that they won’t do on their own,” he told JIS News in an interview.

“We are bringing people together to find solutions to the problems of the region and because we are doing that, people are coming back and they are coming back in bigger numbers. Nothing succeeds like success and as the

CWA succeeds, everyone wants to participate, and it is becoming bigger and bigger,” he said.

Dr. Samuel pointed out that Jamaica had agreed to host the 20th CWA two years ago and the country recommitted last year in St. Kitts.

“Then there was Hurricane Melissa and everyone thought, well, maybe we should not do it given the reconstruction. Jamaica insisted on having the 20th CWA here and what it has shown is that all of the policies that the Government of Jamaica has put in place to build resilience, to build forward stronger, are working. Because what you find is that Jamaica has recovered so quickly and the success of CWA 20 is basically confirmation that all of the policies to build resilience that the Government has been putting in place, are working,” he said.

The conference reflects CARICOM’s mandate in Agriculture to increase cooperation between the countries to strengthen the resilience of the sector.

Dr. Samuel said this means ensuring food and nutrition security for the region, as the theme for CWA is centred around Food Security, Agri-Business, Climate-Smart Technologies and Export Expansion.

“So, you’ll recall that during COVID-19, it started out as a health crisis but then it almost morphed into a food crisis because you had all of these interruptions. Countries became very nationalistic about their food… countries like India were not exporting rice. With all of that happening, that could have turned into a very bad situation for the region,” he said.

“The Heads of Government for CARICOM decided that this can’t happen again. They put in place what was called at that time the 25 by 2025 initiative to reduce the import bill of the region by 25 per cent by the year 2025.

More recently they have extended that to 2030 and they now call it the 25 by 2025 plus 5. This is to ensure that together we can feed ourselves no matter what happens,” he explained.

The ongoing conference seeks to focus on areas across the sector, including sustainable fisheries, agribusiness and investment, and trade and export expansion.

Meanwhile, Dr. Samuel said by the end of the conference, the main hope is that countries recommit to achieving the goals of vision 25 by 2025 plus 5.

He said the CWA serves as a call to action for people to do things to make sure the goals are achieved, especially in the areas of technology and innovation as well as the continuation of the youth programmes.

“In a situation where the average age of farmers is 50 to 60, you want to ensure that younger people come in. Also, there are other goals that are to be achieved, so what we are doing is bringing people together to find solutions, and what we want to do at the end of this exercise is to take stock of all of these solutions that we are putting forward, so we can then follow up to make sure that action is taken and the things that were decided this time, when we come back in 2027, that those things would have been implemented,” he said.