Hector Barreyra (left) speaks with Juan Carlos Espinola, UNDP representative to Jamaica, while Jeremy Collymore, (foreground) coordinator of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency, talks with Errol Berkeley (right), a representative of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture in the Bahamas. They were at yesterday's opening of regional review meeting on 'Beyond 2004 Events: Lessons for the Caribbean Region', at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, New Kingston. - RUDOLPH BROWN/CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC:
BANANA OFFICIALS from the Caribbean are meeting in Brussels, Belgium, to examine critical issues affecting the industry.
High on the agenda of the 'Second International Banana Conference', is the long running dispute over the marketing of bananas in Europe, and increasing competition among giant supermarket chains that has driven down the prices paid to small farmers in the Caribbean, Latin America and West Africa.
SEEKING PERMANENT DIALOGUE
The Windward Island Farmers' Association (WIFA) coordinator, Renwick Rose, who is attending the three-day meeting, said regional farmers would be lobbying for a mechanism for permanent dialogue.
"We are trying to insist that us, the supermarkets, the big companies and so on, we need to find some place where we talk about the problems in the industry, because it is clear, even a couple years ago a large company like Chiquita went bankrupt because of the banana business."
"So clearly people need to talk about what is happening and how we can make the industry sustainable, so we are seeing that as a clear outcome, that permanent forum for dialogue."
"What we are also seeing is that there are a number of other issues, for example, how can we make concrete recommendations for a programme to support small farmers, because in the context of the international banana industry we are perhaps the only region where small farmers constitute the bulk of the industry," he added.
