Food Stability in the Caribbean

Food stability relates to the extent to which food is uninterruptedly available, accessible and properly utilized over time, at the national and household level. It is impacted by natural (natural disasters, pandemics and pests), as well as man-made factors (conflicts, praedial larceny, environmental degradation and economic shocks). The Caribbean region is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of weather-related natural disasters, exacerbated by climate change in the last 20 years, and manifested in significant losses in GDP, loss of livelihoods, agricultural production capacity and increased imports of food. The Caribbean however, has had little experience with agricultural insurance, except for some export crops in Jamaica and for banana in the Eastern Caribbean, due to the predominance by small players and multiple cropping in the region. At the same time, all of these crop insurance schemes ceased to exist in the face of more frequent and intense adverse weather episodes in recent years. Caribbean governments have therefore been paying greater attention to comprehensive risk management planning encompassing preparedness, prevention, response and recovery. Within this framework, emphasis is being placed on ex-ante risk financing strategies for the agricultural sector, such as parametric agricultural insurance models, as in Jamaica, and the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, which is pooling the risks and resources across countries, to provide quick budget support to countries in times of disasters. The region continues to search for innovative solutions, such as the use of debt swaps to fund investments in building resilience.