Food and nutrition security policies in the Caribbean: Challenging the corporate food regime?

Trinidad and Tobago is contributing to climate change by maintaining a model for food security that is based on corporate controls over food and agriculture. With policy documents, media sources, and ethnographic data, I argue that Trinidad and Tobago’s food system is connected to national and transnational markets that firmly affix the country’s food system to the fossil fuel economy. Three examples are provided. The first is the adoption of the World Bank’s ‘value chain’ model for agriculture, which favours larger, economically (rather than ecologically) efficient farmers. The second is the recent state-led campaign to ‘put T&T on your table’, which overlooks the political prioritisation of industrial food imports exemplified by current policies to eliminate VAT (Value Added Tax) on industrial food imports. The final example is the November 2013 Memorandum of Understanding between Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, under which Guyanese lands are being converted for the industrial production of corn, soya, and other crops for final processing and consumption in Trinidad and Tobago. While such policies are justified under the label of national and regional food security, I argue that they perpetuate a Caribbean-style corporate food regime that counteracts more climate-sensitive efforts to create sustainable producer–consumer networks.