The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission and the Government of Grenada are calling for greater investment in young people and women as the region works to strengthen its food security and reduce its dependence on imported food.
The call came at a regional symposium that placed youth and women at the centre of agricultural transformation, bringing together stakeholders from across the OECS to examine how the sector can be modernised and made more attractive to a new generation.
The symposium reflects a growing regional consensus that the Eastern Caribbean cannot continue to rely heavily on imported food, and that the people best placed to change that are the young people and women who have historically been under-represented in agriculture.
Food security has become a central concern for OECS member states, including the Commonwealth of Dominica, where agriculture remains a pillar of the economy and of village life. The region has long imported a large share of what it eats, leaving it exposed to global price shocks and supply disruptions.
For Dominica, the message from the symposium speaks directly to the island's own priorities. Farming, fishing and the wider agricultural sector support families from Portsmouth to Grand Bay and into the Kalinago Territory, and the Government has repeatedly pointed to agriculture as a route to employment and to reducing the food import bill.
Bringing more young people into the sector is seen as essential. Stakeholders at the symposium examined ways to make agriculture more appealing to youth, including the use of technology, better access to finance and training, and stronger links between producers and markets.
Women, who already carry much of the work in food production and marketing across the Caribbean, were also placed at the heart of the discussions. The symposium called for greater investment in their enterprises and for removing the barriers that keep them from scaling up.
The OECS Commission has been working with member governments on regional approaches to agriculture, food security and nutrition, and the Grenada symposium forms part of that wider effort. Grenada hosted the event as part of its role in advancing the regional agenda.
Regional cooperation is central to the approach. Small island states face similar constraints — limited land, high input costs, vulnerability to hurricanes and drought, and competition for labour — and officials argue that shared solutions and pooled resources make more sense than isolated national efforts.
For Dominica, participation in such regional initiatives is consistent with its membership in the OECS and CARICOM, and with the island's push to expand production in bananas, plantains, cocoa, coffee and other crops, as well as in fisheries and geothermal energy.
The symposium's emphasis on youth and women also connects to broader questions of employment and rural development. As older farmers age out of the sector, the region needs a new generation willing to take up the work, and it needs the financing, land and technical support to make that possible.
Officials have not yet announced specific programmes or funding commitments arising from the symposium, but the gathering is expected to feed into ongoing OECS work on agriculture and food security.
For Dominican households, the stakes are practical. A stronger, more modern agricultural sector means more local food on shelves and in markets, more jobs in farming and fishing communities, and less vulnerability when global supply chains are disrupted.
The OECS Commission and the Government of Grenada have made clear that the transformation they envisage will not happen without deliberate investment in the people who will carry it forward — the region's youth and its women.
