Early assessment from the damage caused by Hurricane Dean indicates that the country's agriculture sector was particularly hard hit. According to Minister of Agriculture Roger Clarke, even though only a preliminary assessment has been done so far, banana, coffee and vegetable production seem worst affected. Export banana production has been all but destroyed, and major vegetable growing areas of southern St. Elizabeth suffered major dislocation.

The full impact of this devastation goes beyond the immediate destruction of crops and the loss of local and overseas markets. The medium-term livelihoods of small farmers and vendors will be affected as well. It will also take time to replant and replace infrastructure to allow the sector to get back to the place where it was recording a recovery from the declines of the recent past. In the interim there will be an exacerbation of the difficulties some growers were already experiencing.

Unfortunately, too, while it is relatively easier to mitigate damage to housing stock and commercial buildings by installing certain protective equipment, farm crops are left almost entirely to the mercies of the elements. The Agriculture Minister yesterday pointed to the increasing difficulty in obtaining crop insurance, given the reluctance of reinsurers to do business with the Caribbean. The apparent increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes in recent years have only made this worse. In fact, in the past two decades we have seen the devastating impact of hurricanes Gilbert in 1988, Hugo in 1989, Luis and Marilyn in 1995, Mitch and Georges in 1998 and Lenny in 1999, and more recently Ivan 2004, Emily 2005 and Dean this past weekend - all causing major crop and job losses.

At yesterday's press conference, Mr. Clarke noted that a Catastrophe Fund established by his ministry for banana is "too young" to respond to this disaster. This is an important initiative but it is equally imperative that farmers be encouraged to work through their representative organisations to seek ways to recover damages from a disaster, rather than expecting that the Government will be there as a matter of course to render compensation assistance.

The minister is right that more and more farmers have to consider insurance as part of the legitimate cost of doing business many will argue that they cannot afford this without a consequential spike in prices to consumers.

We do well, too, to revisit a suggestion made two years ago by Dr. Wendel Parham in his capacity as executive director of the Caribbean Agriculture and Research Development Institute, for the implementation of an action plan to protect Caribbean food systems. He suggested then that given the region's increased vulnerability to natural disasters because of the effects of climate change, and the threat this places on agricultural production and food security, there should be research focusing on the development of high temperature resistant and high temperature preference varieties; gene banks to preserve diversity; seed banks to restart agricultural production after disasters; and ways to increase shelf life. These proposals should be seen as practical proactive ways of reducing the impact of the vagaries of the weather on our agriculture sector.

In the meantime, regional officials who have long talked about the need to pool resources to respond to natural disasters have to move beyond talk into action.

But these concerns notwithstanding, we can reflect on the fact that we have travelled this road before, and have bounced back, and can do so again.