The sla’s the limit 🥗
Securing food security in the Caribbean
Read this article in Dutch here | Liever in het Nederlands?
The Caribbean region has conditions one would expect to find local food production and a well-established food market. The climate is usually quite ideal, the average yearly rainfall is good enough to produce, and tourism numbers are incredibly high – giving a large demand for fresh produce. However, for most of the islands, the amount of food being imported exceeds 90% of total food consumption. For Aruba it is even over 95%, although topics like ‘food security’ and ‘food sovereignty’, appear to be high on the national agendas. Why hasn’t food production been increasing in the past years?
We have been active in the wider Caribbean region for about 12 years now. My initial reason for choosing the region for the first time for research back in 2013, was also based on the curiosity about the potential for agriculture, the potential for food production. Every time we visit the region for one of our projects we feel the same potential, and more and more we realised that we couldn’t get grip on the context and situation unless we would spend a significant amount of time in the region. To do what? To listen, to hear, to see, to observe, to taste, to talk.
The last months I had the opportunity to make this happen. I had over 50 meetings with relevant people to talk about this topic, listened to the radio, read the news, all aiming to understand the context, challenges and pathways for the future, and to define my own vision on securing food security in the Caribbean.
In this blog, we describe:
- The challenges we see Aruba is facing
- The signals I have sensed that catalysing the food production is potentially around the corner
- The project PHITO aiming to bridging the challenges
In the follow-up of this blog, we describe the pathways towards a future of local food production, as discussed in the Phito Radio Show episode 5.
Food production: The challenges
1️⃣ High import bills
Most food in Aruba is imported. The islands is full of people, crowded by tourists, and scarce of agricultural land. This means: food has to be imported too. Around 95-99% of food is not produced locally, giving the country high import bills and making it vulnerable to external shocks (changes to the market which cannot be controlled; Covid, tariff-wars, etc.).
A lot of work is done by the Dutch Caribbean Agriculture Livestock Fisheries Association (DCALFA), aiming to improve food security for the Dutch Caribbean by increasing local production, regional trade and reducing dependence on long-distance imports.
One of the goals of DCALFA is to find out the numbers of import of food for the CAS and BES islands, and to estimate how the islands could move towards a decrease of food import. In other words: what are fruits and vegetables that are imported but could be produced locally? More on this below.
2️⃣ Minimum cooperation and communication
Another gap exists in communication among researchers, consultants, and policy makers. Much research related to food and agriculture has been done in the region but is scattered across databases, if publicly available at all. At this moment Amber van Veghel (PhD Candidate at the University of Aruba & KU Leuven) is leading a project in which an overview will be created of existing publicly available food-related research on the ABC islands, in the form of a scoping review.
The farming tradition and history in Aruba is rather short compared to many other countries. As in most parts of Europe, farming has been in the hands of farmers (not necessarily pure business people, often primarily based on a harmony of the holy trinity of (wo)man, animal and machine). Farming was a generation thing, from dad to son, from mom to daughter. Ideas, knowledge, motivation was passed on through various channels, which is still reflected in the amount of channels that current farmers use to make decisions in their farming.
In the past century, small scale agriculture did exist in Aruba, local knowledge was present, but the sector was minimised as the focus of the country moved to tourism more and more.
Somehow, maybe because of this short farming tradition, the cooperation is limited. Even though demand exceeds the supply of produce (the ‘sla’, meaning salad in Dutch, really is the limit), the cooperation between farmers and within the farming community is rather low. Competition is unnecessarily high, as the market is not saturated. I believe cooperation would improve the position on the market even more. If farmers would group together, they could minimise input costs, have a stronger position on the market, and learn from each other. Transparency and trust are key ingredients, especially in the context of small islands like Aruba.
3️⃣ No farmers
Every time I met people from across the agricultural sector, they emphasised one consistent message: if you want to support farming in Aruba, the first thing you need is farmers. Why try to lift the agricultural community if there are no farmers to produce the food we need?
Finding a solution for this is a bit chicken or egg, but the observation is valid: full time farmers on the island are sparsely populated. Small farmers (so-called hobby farmers) are present in abundance though, and perhaps part of the solution lies with them.
Food production: Solutions and innovations
So, given the challenges the region faces, we begin to understand why the boost to agriculture is still quite limited. Despite the hard work of so many local and regional parties, local food production is marginal, and most food is imported. But please note the following signs showing that potential catalysing of the sector is around the corner, on different levels:
- First of all, we see a locally increased attention for the diversification of food, and the search to develop a resilient food system. Governments are trying their best to modify policy plans and to give farmers the support they need. A good example is the new Agri Innovation Park Aruba, which will include 36,000 m² of greenhouses to boost local production.
- Secondly, regional cooperation is really in the lift, as for example in the umbrella organisation DCALFA (Dutch Caribbean Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries Association), active on the 6 islands of the Dutch Caribbean (Bonaire, Curacao, Aruba, Statia, Saba, St. Maarten). This platform is led by the local representatives of the departments of agriculture on the islands aiming to improve cooperation between the different sister islands. Their slogan: We don’t compete, we cooperate. Together they are (amongst others) aiming to develop one shared focus and research agenda which we like specifically. Given the fact the organisation is locally led (Nathalie Maduro from Aruba is its president) and backed by RVO we believe the platform could get an important position in the cooperation of the islands. Apart from DCALFA multiple other initiatives seem to unify the region, consisting of multiple Small Island States (SIS).
- Thirdly, transregional cooperation appears to grow quickly too. Most farmers I spoke to have ties to countries like Mexico, USA, Dominican Republic and Venezuela, but the connection to The Netherlands can be sensed throughout the sector too. The proactive presence of VNO (Vertegenwoordiging van Nederland in Aruba) offers glue to agriculture, aiming to sharing expertise from The Netherlands and Aruba and (crucially!) vice versa.
Lastly, important to mention, the budget that will most likely become available to strengthen the agricultural by the government of The Netherlands will for sure improve the food security in the region. About 24 million will be invested through the development of a revolving fund on the six DC islands. Part of this budget will also be meant to support policy making activities for the local governments. Although this is still work in progress by Zsolt Szabo (the secretary of state of The Netherlands has recently sent his letter to Parliament, see here), we hope this budget will indeed help to catalyse food security in the region.
Bridging the challenges: PHITO
PHITO (www.phito.eu) is a European Commission co-financed project aiming to support small and medium farmers in food production. This includes finding new potential farmers and supporting them to make the move to more sustainable agriculture. Or, in the case of Aruba, to get into agriculture anyway.
Why a European project in the Caribbean?
Good question. Two main reasons:
First, PHITO aims to reach as many farmers as possible. We want the platform to become inclusive. Not only for larger scale farmers in Hungary. Not only for small holders in Portugal. PHITO is for all, and should also have relevance for the Caribbean region. To make sure we develop the app for the Caribbean, we involve Caribbean farmers in the development of PHITO.
Second, the idea behind PHITO was born in the Caribbean region. The necessity to organise the farming community, the potential for food production and the market opportunities in the region gave us the idea of a farmers app – connecting farmers with farmers (for inspiration and cooperation) and farmers with the market. We called it ‘FARM APP’ in our notes, back in 2019. And here we are in 2025, actually making it happen.
Inspiration and data
In our meetings with many farmers on the islands, we discussed what PHITO should be in their perspective.
For most of them, there is a strong need for inspiration and practical information to learn new stuff, come across innovations, meet likeminded people. The absence of data in the agricultural sector was stressed too – geo information for climate and soils, import and export numbers and available produce for the market are examples of data which could be useful for the agricultural community.
Farmers network
Another important opportunity PHITO will give an answer to is developing a farmers network, where the farming community can get in touch and cooperate. This includes everybody involved with the food produced: from input retailers to service providers, and from farmers associations to local consumers or tourists.
Maurice Adriaense, first contact person of PHITO in Bonaire, shared about PHITO on the local TV, and the governmental website posted about the project here.
Want to know more about PHITO? Check out the website, or read more in our previous blog on what exactly we did in the first year of the project.
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Soon, the follow-up of this blog will be posted – Securing Food Security in the Caribbean Part 2: Pathways for the future. Make sure to follow us on LinkedIn to get updated!
(last update: June 2025)