ESL
Moderator run-sheetThe Last Mile of Food Security · v5 · matches the 23-slide review deck
Slides

Moderator Run-Sheet v5

Matches Presentation v5 (23 slides) and Gamma prompt v5. If the deck changes, bump all three to v6.

The Last Mile of Food Security · CWA 2026 · Thursday 1 October · 60 minutes Ocean Coral Springs, Trelawny · Presented by Environmental Solutions Limited

At a glance

Clock Min Segment Who Slides
0:00 3 Welcome and framing Moderator 1
0:03 12 Movement 1: The reframe Stephen Jones 2–9
0:15 15 Movement 2: The last mile, on Trelawny's crop Stephen / ESL demo lead 10–20
0:30 23 Movement 3: Panel Moderator + 5 panellists 21
0:53 7 Commitments and close Moderator 22–23

Hard stop at 1:00. If anything overruns, cut audience Q&A first. Never cut the commitments.

Panellists (fill in before Thursday): | Seat | Profile | Name / title | |---|---|---| | A | CARICOM or IICA technical lead | [ ] | | B | Agricultural economist | [ ] | | C | National extension leader | [ ] | | D | Development-finance representative | [ ] | | E | Youth- or women-led agribusiness operator | [ ] |

Seat the panel in this order from the moderator outward. It follows the demo chain from regional signal to farm operator.

0:00 · Welcome (3 min) · Moderator

Script (adapt freely):

Good [morning/afternoon]. In the last two years CARICOM has built something the region never had before: a live view of its own food system. The Food Security Monitoring Dashboard, the Regional Risk Analysis mechanism and the E-Agriculture Strategy are all adopted and running.

This session asks one question: when that system sees a problem, what happens on the farm? We'll do it in three parts: a short argument, a demonstration of what the last mile looks like on Trelawny's own crop, yam, and a panel whose job is to leave us with commitments, not just conversation.

Please hold questions for the panel. There's a card on your seat [if printed]; keep it, you'll need it at the end.

Introduce Stephen in one line: Managing Director of Environmental Solutions Limited, Kingston.

Cue: slide 1 is up as you speak. Hand over at 0:03.

0:03 · Movement 1: The reframe (12 min) · Stephen

The moderator is off stage. Time signals from the front row: show "3 min" at 0:12 and "0" at 0:15.

What the room hears (so the moderator can refer back to it later): 1. The region built its eyes. Credit CARICOM. 2. CARICOM reports production up about 24%, but the bill is still over US$6B. Jamaica's agri-food imports were US$1.67B in 2022 and US$1.73B in 2025. 3. Jamaica's wheat and corn bills fell 35–40% while tonnes fell only 8–9%. Jamaica grows no wheat and very little corn: the bill follows world prices, not our farms. 4. The winnable substitution (poultry) is mostly won. 5. Food security is a purchasing-power target: how much of what this family eats did this acre pay for? It sits alongside the import bill, not instead of it. 6. Staples floor plus value-add engine. 7. The last mile has two tracks: the decision track (signal → drone → diagnosis → lab → decision) and the physical track (harvest and grade → storage → transport → fresh market and/or processing). 8. Where value leaks after harvest (2026): storage capacity, farm roads, more than J$14bn a year lost to theft, and climate.

0:15 · Movement 2: The last mile (15 min) · Stephen / ESL demo lead

Everything is on screen. There is no live flight.

Step Slides What's shown Time
Film 10 ~60-second film: the last mile on yam 1.5
Yam context 11–12 Trelawny's crop and exports; the 2026 Melissa recovery (65,000 kg of planting material) 2.5
The chain 13–16 Signal, drone, ground truth → lab confirmation → farm-level decision → fresh market, processing or both 5
Proof 17 The last mile already working on ESL Farms pepper: lab done, processing path done 1.5
Worth and funding 18–19 What the last mile is worth to your import bill; who pays for each step, including storage, roads and security 2.5
Model 20 Two-track reference model, youth and women operators, ESL's two steps 2

Lines for Stephen: - At slide 8: "When most of you hear 'last mile' you think roads, storage and theft. You're right, and so is the data. The last mile is both: the decision on the farm and the journey to the buyer." - At slide 9: "Theft isn't only lost income. The Ministry warns stolen crops are often picked soon after spraying and sold before they're safe. A recorded, tested lot answers both problems." - At slide 10: "Here's what the last mile looks like, on Trelawny's own crop." - At slide 12: "The Ministry is investing in the right place. 65,000 kg of planting material is going into the ground. The last mile is what protects that investment." - At slide 16: "After grading, the crop forks: the best goes fresh, the rest is processed, and most farms will do both." - At slide 17: "Here's the last mile already working on our own pepper in Clarendon, on the processing path. The lab step is done: ESL and Bureau of Standards analysis. The value step is done: samples are with bulk buyers now. [Name the other steps honestly: in place, or being connected.]" - At slide 18: "Every country here will get this worksheet with its own figures." (Only if ESL will send it.) - At slide 18: "Before processing costs: Moruga powder roughly quadruples an acre. Scotch bonnet only pays as a tested, traceable product, and that premium is what the last mile delivers." - At slide 20: "ESL provides two of these steps. Any accredited lab and any drone operator can run this model."

At 0:30 the moderator steps up. If the demo passes 0:32, the moderator takes over at slide 20. (That's the only overrun rule.)

0:30 · Movement 3: Panel (23 min) · Moderator

Bridge (30 sec)

We've just seen the last mile on Trelawny's own crop: a regional signal becomes a field diagnosis, a lab confirmation, a farm decision and captured value. The question for this panel is whether that can happen in every member state, and who makes it happen.

Round 1: one question each (~12 min, about 2 min per answer)

Keep answers tight. Give a one-line "thank you" and move on; don't summarise between speakers.

A · CARICOM / IICA lead

The CARICOM–WFP Caribbean Real-Time Food Security Monitoring Dashboard has tracked household food security across eleven member states since April 2025. When it shows households in a parish or district getting worse, what happens next? Does anything reach the farms in that area?

Follow-up if time allows: The dashboard measures what households can eat, while extension works on what farms produce. Who in the region is responsible for connecting the two?

B · Agricultural economist

Stephen argued that food security is a purchasing-power target: value funded per acre. What would a finance ministry need to see to adopt that measure alongside the import bill?

Follow-up: Where does that measure break down? (Trade shocks and a closed border are the expected answer, and that's what the staples floor covers.)

C · National extension leader

Honestly: today, how long does it take from a farmer spotting a problem to getting a confirmed diagnosis and a recommendation? Which step is the slowest?

Follow-up: The recovery programme is putting 65,000 kg of yam heads into the ground. How would extension know, in time, if a field goes wrong? And once it's harvested, what's the weakest link between the farm gate and the buyer: storage, roads or theft?

D · Development finance

Slide 19 proposed who pays for each step, from lab testing to cold storage and farm roads. Where would your institution come in, and where would it never come in?

Follow-up: Essex Valley shows cold storage can be financed. Who pays to keep it full of sound, tested produce, and who pays for a lab test for a smallholder?

E · Youth / women-led agribusiness operator

Which of these steps could a young operator run as a paying business tomorrow, and what's stopping them?

Follow-up: We showed frozen yam and yam flour from off-grade tubers as possibilities. Which would you build, and what would you need first?

Reserve questions (use only if round 1 finishes early)

Round 1 realistically takes 16–17 minutes, so there is no scheduled round 2. Keep these in hand: - To B: "Some will hear this as an argument against import substitution and 25 by 2025. Is it?" (The answer we want: no, it adds the farm end of access alongside the import bill.) - To A: "What would it take for the Secretariat's Agricultural and Agro-Industrial Development Programme to look at a farm-level measure like this?" - To C and D together: "Extension says the bottleneck is ___. Finance, is that something you'd fund?" - To E: "Youth and women are named in 25 by 2025+5. Is the last mile the place they actually get paid?"

Audience Q&A (~5 min; cut first if running late)

Take 2–3 questions together, then route each to one panellist. Keep each answer under a minute.

If the room is quiet, use a seed question: "What would a small island with no accredited lab do?" (Route to A or Stephen. A good answer: refer samples regionally; the model doesn't need a lab on every island.)

If a panellist rejects the frame (e.g. "the dashboard was never meant to do that" or "value per acre isn't food security"), the moderator says: "That's exactly the gap we're naming. Who should own it?"

0:53 · Commitments and close (7 min) · Moderator

This is the part the programme committee will measure. Protect it.

We said we'd leave with commitments, not conversation. I'll ask each panellist for one thing their institution will do in the next twelve months, and a name attached to it.

Go down the line A → E, 45 seconds each. Our rapporteur records each one on paper (and on slide 22 if typing is possible):

Panellist Institution 12-month action Contact
A
B
C
D
E

Then to the room:

If your institution wants to pilot the last mile, one country, one value chain, one loop, write it on your card and hand it to [name] at the door, or scan the code on screen. We'll follow up with every card within 48 hours.

Close (30 sec):

The region has built its eyes. This week, on this island, we've seen that the hands can be built too. Thank you to our panel, and to CARICOM for the platform.

Slide 23 (QR code and contact) stays up as people leave.

Commitment cards are the primary capture method, not a backup. Senior officials may leave early on the Thursday of a week-long CWA. Follow up by email within 48 hours.

If someone asks a hard question

Route these to Stephen. The suggested answers are below.

Question Answer in one or two lines
"Isn't this ESL selling its services?" "As I said on slide 20, we provide two of the steps. Any accredited lab and any drone operator can run this model, and we want them to." [Add, if true: "We won't bid to run the pilot we're proposing."]
"Was that a real lab result?" "It was a test schedule: what gets tested and against which limits. The results come from the pilot."
"Was that film real footage?" "It's an illustration of the model, as labelled on screen. The concept note describes where we're going; the pilot is how we get there."
"Isn't a drone overkill? Farmers already send WhatsApp photos to extension officers." "They should keep doing it. The drone adds an auditable record of where the problem is, which a buyer or an inspector will accept."
"Who's licensed to tell a farmer what to spray?" "The extension officer. That's why the decision card is prepared for them, not issued by us."
"Is your pepper powder actually selling?" "It has just completed ESL and Bureau of Standards Jamaica analysis, and samples for bulk sales are with buyers now."
"How do you dry it?" "That part's proprietary. What matters for the model is the testing, and anyone can use that."
"Isn't ESL testing its own product?" "Yes, and so did the Bureau of Standards, independently. That's the point: a buyer accepts it because it isn't only our word."
"Why not turn all our yam into flour?" "Export yam earns more fresh. Processing is for the tubers that currently have no market, and for glut years."
"Those powder prices are retail." "They're published bulk-pack prices, 1 to 25 kg, as a public benchmark. Our bulk buyers' offers will replace them. The point holds: tested product earns the top of the range."
"Where's the processing cost?" "Excluded on purpose; our process is proprietary. These are gross values per acre, as the slide says."
"This ignores storage, transport and theft." "Slide 9 is exactly that: the physical track. The same records and test results that drive the farm decision protect the produce in storage, on the road and at the point of sale."
"Is processing always better than fresh?" "No. The best produce earns more fresh. Processing is for what would otherwise be lost; most farms will do both."
"Isn't yam our largest agricultural export?" "Our largest fresh-produce export. Rum is bigger overall."
"You're telling us to give up on growing our own food?" "No. The staples floor is non-negotiable: it's what feeds us through a hurricane. We're saying that on the rest of the land, value per acre matters as much as tonnes."
"Drones are too expensive for smallholders." "Smallholders don't buy drones; they buy a scouting visit. That's the business model for young operators."
"Your numbers are Jamaica only." "Yes, from UN Comtrade to 2025. We'd welcome each member state running the same check; the pattern is what matters."
"The US$6 billion figure is out of date." "It's the figure CARICOM used in February 2025 when the target moved to 2030. The direction is the point, not the decimals."

Contingencies

If this happens Do this
Venue Wi-Fi fails (Gamma runs online) Present from the PPTX or PDF export of Presentation v2 on the laptop. The film plays from a local MP4.
Film won't play Skip it and go to slide 11; narrate the chain from slide 13.
A panellist doesn't show Moderator gives their question to the nearest profile (A↔C, D↔B, E↔C) or uses a reserve question
Demo overruns past 0:32 Moderator takes over at slide 20.
Panellist monologues "Thank you, I want to make sure we hear from everyone," then move to the next seat.
Running late at 0:50 Skip audience Q&A and go straight to commitments.

Checklist: day before (Wed 30 Sep)