Richard Blair (PhD) is the Advisor, CARICOM Agri-Food Systems, to the Honourable Zulfikar Mustapha, Minister of Agriculture in Guyana. He was previously appointed by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture as Coordinator-Regional Agenda for the Caribbean at the CARICOM Secretariat, and later served as the Deputy Programme Manager, Agricultural Development in the Trade and Economic Integration Directorate of the CARICOM Secretariat. Dr Blair lectured in the Economics Department of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Guyana and is an Adjunct Professor in its Department of Agriculture in the Faculty of Agriculture Sciences on the M.Sc. programme in Agro-Technology and Business. Dr Blair holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Hohenheim, Germany and a Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in economics from the Universidad Catolica Santo Domingo and the University of Guyana respectively, as well as a Master's Certificate in Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation and Information Systems, from the Laval University, Quebec, Canada.