Amid a push by the Health and Wellness Ministry for more Jamaicans to eat healthier, Seprod Group Chief Executive Officer Richard Pandohie is asserting that the global food supply crisis is preventing more Jamaicans from buying nutritious foods.
The ongoing Russia and Ukraine war and the COVID-19 pandemic have largely impacted food security globally.
Pandohie, who was speaking with Radio Jamaica News recently, said consumers need cheaper and preferably local options, as countries move towards food nationalisation to protect their own food supply.
“The bread basket of Europe has been disrupted so the demand for what’s available in the rest of the world is increasing, and so countries like ours in small developing home state economies, we’re fighting with much bigger countries who are prepared to pay higher prices.
“And so, we’re going to continue to be subjected, in my opinion, certainly for the rest of the year, to the higher prices and supply issues. However, the key is not to panic about it. The key is to plan to mitigate it,” he stressed.
To that end, the business leader is calling for local food production to be ramped up with alacrity, noting that the forecast for food prices for the remainder of the year does not look promising.
Pandohie insisted that the pandemic and problems in Europe have provided Jamaica with opportunities which are not being seized.
“We have the ability to grow a lot more in the short term. That could help to offset some of the some of these food crises that we’re currently facing. We have become so dependent on imports.
“We’ve become almost lazy in our production that we’re going to sit here and just wait for the crisis to just slap us, instead of saying, let’s get up, find a way to get around this, not only to produce for our own local consumption but also produce for consumption in the rest of CARICOM,” he suggested.
