Revised OECS Regional Plan of Action for Agriculture 2012 – 2022

II. Executive Summary A. Background and Rationale In recognizing the need for the urgency to address the challenges facing the agriculture sector and its development, consistent with the goal and the commitment of Member States under Article 20 of the Economic Union Protocol, the OECS Secretariat conducted an independent review of the existing Policy Framework and Strategic Plan for agriculture in 2009. The review indicated that the Policy Framework and Strategic Plan compared well to framework priorities for agriculture in the wider regional sphere and in countries with similar open economies and development challenges. However, arising out of international developments since 2004 and the difficulties encountered in the installation of the institutional arrangements for execution of the original OECS Agriculture Plan of Action, a number of critical areas for attention emerged as inputs for a reoriented OECS Agriculture programme private sector-led strategies to transform OECS agriculture by enhancing response to national and regional food and nutrition security and new trends in non-traditional agricultural exports; These include:

• balancing the integration of poverty considerations in commercial supply chains;
• a strategy for financing agriculture and for resource mobilization primarily for the OECS regional programme;
• strategies to address the impacts of climate change and climate variability;
• enabling more coherent and effective participation of OECS Member States in the regional programme through capacity building at the OECS Secretariat in programme management, monitoring and evaluation; and
• approaches to more systematically developing synergies with CARICOM-wide agriculture.