COVID-19 Archives - Caribbean Week of Agriculture (CWA) 2021

Decades of development efforts undermined by pandemic – FAO report

Food Security, Food Systems, News, Sustainable Development Goals COVID-19, food security, hunger, pandemic, sustainable development goals

**A farmer harvests potatoes in Manchaybamba**, **Peru** (Photo via IFAD)

(United Nations News) COVID-19 has set back progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), undermining decades of development efforts, according to a new report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“It’s an alarming picture, in which progress on many SDG targets has been reversed, with a significant impact on all aspects of sustainable development and making the achievement of the 2030 Agenda even more challenging,” said FAO Chief Statistician, Pietro Gennari.

The analysis, Tracking progress on food and agriculture SDG-related indicators, focuses on eight of the SDGs, which were adopted at a UN Summit in New York in 2015.

According to the report, the COVID-19 pandemic might have pushed an additional 83 to 132 million people into chronic hunger in 2020, making the target of ending hunger even more distant.

Around 14 percent of all food is lost along the supply chain, before it even reaches the consumer, which FAO considers “an unacceptably high proportion”. Progress has also faltered towards maintaining plant and animal genetic diversity for food and agriculture.

These “Island Growers” are Reducing Imports, Improving Regional Access to Affordable Fresh Food

Food Security, Food Systems, News, Sustainable Development Goals 100% climate resilient greenhouse systems., agriculture, COVID-19, food quality, Food sustainability, natural disasters, OECS Sustainable Development Movement Summit 2021, organic farming

(Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Press Room) Food sustainability in the Caribbean has been a hot topic for years. While many islands in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) have varying degrees of agricultural production, hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters continue to threaten their sustainability and reliable production of affordable fresh produce. Over the past few months, as COVID-19 has shifted the global landscape, the cost of agricultural produce in the Caribbean has become increasingly unstable.

The OECS Sustainable Development Movement Summit 2021 is a platform for, among other things, conversations surrounding regional sustainable development across all sectors, including agriculture, and in recent times, the innovative work of Alquimi Renewables, LLC (“Alquimi”) and its farming operations group, Island Growers Caribbean© (“IGC”), have joined that conversation.

The teams at Alquimi and IGC are implementing a unique business model to radically improve and protect how fresh produce is grown in the Region. This model focuses on producing imported ‘cold weather’ crops in proprietary, climate smart hydroponic greenhouse farms. IGC intends to improve food quality, use organic farming practices, and ensure a consistent supply of produce to regional markets throughout the year by the use of these newly developed, 100% climate resilient greenhouse systems.