Shas­tri Boodan

Pres­i­dent of the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce Li­aquat Ali said T&T should con­sid­er look­ing to Guyana for in­creased food se­cu­ri­ty. He was at the time speak­ing with re­porters at a prize dis­tri­b­u­tion for Old Mac Agro Sup­plies Lim­it­ed and Trinidad Par­boil Lim­it­ed's Lenten com­pe­ti­tion in Cou­va

Ali said rice one heav­i­ly con­sumed com­modi­ties im­port­ed in­to the coun­try.T&T is ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing on­ly 10 per cent of the white rice need­ed, so all of the par­boiled rice and 90 per cent of white rice is im­port­ed. The fig­ure is more than 40,000 tonnes an­nu­al­ly and con­tin­ues to rise, he said.

Ali said more T&T busi­ness­men should take ad­van­tage of agri­cul­tur­al op­por­tu­ni­ties in Guyana. He said Old Mac Agro start­ed di­ver­si­fy­ing its op­er­a­tions in­to Guyana in the last decade and has now es­tab­lished a rice plan­ta­tion and a mill in there to en­sure the com­pa­ny gets a steady sup­ply of prod­uct for T&T con­sumers rather than hav­ing to de­pend sole­ly on mid­dle­men.

He said there is a large lo­cal de­mand for beans and an­i­mal feed prod­ucts such as corn.

In 2013, Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MoU) with Guyana's Agri­cul­ture Min­istry for T&T farm­ers to ac­cess 10,000 acres of arable land for cul­ti­va­tion. Six com­modi­ties were iden­ti­fied for de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing corn, cit­rus fruits and soya beans. Con­tact­ed for an up­date on that plan, Ma­haraj said the process is on­go­ing and Gov­ern­ment will act as a fa­cil­i­ta­tor to en­cour­age pri­vate in­vest­ment.