More than 600 delegates attended the 20th Caribbean Week of Agriculture in Trelawny, Jamaica. That is the largest turnout in the event’s two-decade history, according to the Jamaica Information Service. The gathering, held under the theme “The New F.A.C.E. of Caribbean Food Systems,” opened in early October 2026 and brought together agriculture and fisheries ministers, farmers, researchers and youth delegates from across the region.
Rene Orellana Halkyer, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s assistant director-general, told delegates the region is “advancing an ambitious transformation agenda” but needs to move faster from pledges to implementation. The FAO used the milestone 20th edition to announce it is consolidating its Caribbean support under a single subregional framework. That replaces a patchwork of isolated projects that had grown up over previous years.
Four priorities, one framework
The week’s theme set out four priorities: food security, agri-business, climate-smart technologies and export expansion. The FAO’s competitiveness agenda under the new framework includes trade-capacity building with the Caribbean Community, business matchmaking coordinated with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, and work on digital agriculture, water management, traceability and market access across the region.
“These challenges are connected, and our response must be connected as well,” Orellana Halkyer said. He framed the shift toward a single framework as a direct response to small island states’ complaint that aid programmes often arrive in pieces too small to change outcomes at scale.
The FAO is also working on animal health and food safety preparedness in the region, including simulation exercises supported by the Pandemic Fund. Separate work links local food production to public procurement, including school feeding programmes already running in several territories. A youth and women’s track, built around the World Food Forum Youth Action Initiative, expanded its national chapters across several CARICOM member states during the week.
Climate exposure remains the common thread
Climate change and extreme weather continue to disrupt agriculture, fisheries and rural livelihoods across Caribbean small island states. That point was reinforced throughout the week’s technical sessions. More than 70 such sessions ran alongside the main programme, covering everything from hurricane-resistant infrastructure to post-harvest storage.
Jamaica’s hosting of the milestone edition carried particular weight given the island’s recent exposure to hurricane damage. Officials cited that damage repeatedly as evidence for why the region needs faster-moving support rather than multi-year project cycles. Caribbean governments have long argued that their small economies and limited negotiating weight leave them under-served by financing structures designed for larger agricultural exporters elsewhere.
Whether the FAO’s consolidated framework delivers faster results than the project-by-project approach it replaces will likely become clearer at next year’s Caribbean Week of Agriculture. Member states are expected to report back then on specific commitments made in Trelawny. For now, organisers point to the record attendance itself as evidence that regional appetite for coordinated action has grown, even if the mechanisms to deliver it are still being built out.
Smaller island states in particular have pushed for the consolidated approach, arguing that project-by-project aid has previously left gaps between what donors fund and what farmers actually need season to season. The FAO’s own staff have acknowledged that coordination across so many separate national agriculture ministries will take sustained effort well beyond this one week of meetings in Trelawny.
