Noted Grenadian economist Davidson Budhoo who resigned from the world bank in 1988 wrote several books exposing the unprincipled policies and prescriptions of the World Bank in regard to the Caribbean.

To pass the loan qualification test, Budhoo said, small Governments were required to impose strategies that were unpopular and often designed to bring the police out on the streets.

Mr. Budhoo worked with the Grenada revolution and helped secure an IMF loan, as well as establish the Grenada Marketing Board.

He left Grenada to work in the East because he felt his exposures on IMF stupidities had brought down the wrath of that institution, even to include what he perceived as personal threats to his well being.  He died seven years ago from complications to brain surgery.

His contributions to Grenada, and to the exposure of how the International Money lenders could force Caribbean Governments into wrong decisions, is not well known - Mr. Budhoo was a quiet person with little of a soap box personality.

There has since been calls for reform of the structure of the World Bank especially in regard to small states, and some cosmetic attempts have been applied to include the economists of the particular state in policy decisions.

But ever so often the World Bank reverts, like they have recently done, in a report on global agriculture and the policy advise given therein to OECS.

The writer has not seen this report himself, only an analysis from FAO Carib Agri, which is a service provided by the FAO sub-office in Barbados.

The headline is “Caribbean should import food rather than produce it … says world bank member”, and dated January 23rd, 2008.

The World Bank in effect is advising the thousands of small peasant holdings to close down and provide hospitality services.

They say Government should concentrate more on reducing poverty and providing safety nets for the poor, which Caribbean economist Vincent Atkins ridicules “as a grave misunderstanding of the OECS situation.”

When we first heard of CSME we had thought of being better able to coordinate our food security – the idea had conceived Guyana as once again producing the rice and flour and vegetable, of St. Vincent producing more of its agricultural products and strategic locating of agro-processing and manufacturing plants in the smaller, more tourist-oriented economies like Grenada and Barbados.

There was talk of avoiding not only duplication of products, but unharmonious pricing and costs.

The World Bank report in going the other way repeats “the myth that small states like the OECS are better off concentrating on sectors like the services sector”.

They have not however written off large scale farming, but their new policy will affect thousands of small scale growers who would prefer efforts to improve the conditions of their farming, and not to denigrate its importance to their survival.

In our recent budget the finance minister spoke of new access roads for small farmers, loans to buy jeeps to transport produce, fertilizer subsidies.

“The country is hurting – everybody – the farmers are hurting too”, Dr. Mitchell said on T.V..  In all our national discussions on food security the focus has been on replanting – replanting since the break-up of the big estates, replanting even in our backyard, while the poultry and meat farms never quite got off the ground.

But the World Bank report again fails to understand the structural and cultural and other dynamics of Grenada and the OECS.

Mr. Atkins writes, “to encourage dependencies on food imports at the expense of aggressive programmes of domestic food production makes a mockery of the very efforts to reduce rural and urban poverty and to provide safety nets for the poor.”

They do not know that in Grenada a bus drive is also a farmer and a part time fisherman too.

They have not seemed to hear the Prime Minister say in his budget speech that the agriculture sector is set to increase its contribution by some 7.3%, despite the hurricane setbacks (he has also spoken of 3000 trainees for the hospitality sector and measures to protect local labour).

The fact is Government says it is all set to increase its support by some $35 million before 2009, and is rehabilitalizing Government estates, and spending a further E.C.$80 million in an Agricultural Diversification Programme.

Unless the above was said only for the election ears of a people accustomed to promise and not to substance, the Government has obviously held no discussions with the World Bank to convert small farmers into the social sector service.

In this review the World Bank is seeking to undermine any help that small producers can get from the lending and Government agencies.