SHAS­TRI BOODAN

There are plans for more than 400 farm­ers to cul­ti­vate 6,000 acres of un­used land in North East and South East Trinidad, Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj has an­nounced.Speak­ing at the re-com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the min­istry's Plant Prop­a­ga­tion Sta­tion at Marpar Farms in Plum Mi­tan, Man­zanil­la, Ma­haraj said plants from the prop­a­ga­tion sta­tion will be ready in a few months for the am­bi­tious project which is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate hun­dreds of new jobs, in­clud­ing more than 100 jobs at the Marpar Farms.

Ma­haraj said lo­cal agri­cul­ture will get a boost and he pre­dicts there will be a grad­ual re­duc­tion in the price of fresh lo­cal fruits.He said be­cause of the high costs of young trees, many peo­ple are stay­ing away from get­ting in­volved in tree crop pro­duc­tion.

The min­is­ter said in some in­stances seedling trees can sell for as much as $90 a plant, which is a ma­jor dis­in­cen­tive for peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in this type agri­cul­ture. He said be­cause of the high cost of lo­cal­ly grown cit­rus, school feed­ing cater­ers are now sup­ply­ing ap­ples in the lunch­es in­stead of or­anges.He said Ma­par will be sup­ply­ing high qual­i­ty plants of the best ge­net­ic po­ten­tial at rea­son­able costs.

"Ma­par Farms once held a rep­u­ta­tion for hav­ing the best plant­i­ng ma­te­ri­als. It pro­duced the widest col­lec­tion of co­coa germplasm world over and func­tioned as a ma­jor part of glob­al con­ser­va­tion ef­forts in co­coa, man­go, av­o­ca­do, ba­nana and cit­rus ge­net­ic re­sources."He said the sta­tion was closed down in 1994. In 1992 the Poole sub­sta­tion was closed and the La Pas­to­ra prop­a­ga­tion sta­tion was down­sized.

Ma­haraj said be­cause of this farm­ers had to wait as much as five years for a lim­it­ed sup­ply of seedlings, or had to face the open mar­ket and pay ex­or­bi­tant prices for seedlings.He said the min­istry has done a con­sid­er­able amount of in­fra­struc­tur­al work at Marpar Farms, in­clud­ing con­struc­tion of sev­en green­hous­es. Pro­duc­tion of seedling and plants are well un­der­way.

The min­is­ter said the agri­cul­ture sec­tor ex­pand­ed by 5.1 per cent this year and its con­tri­bu­tion to GDP in­creased by 77 per cent from 2009 to 2013.He said there has been a two per cent re­duc­tion in the food im­port bill and food in­fla­tion stands at three per cent as of Sep­tem­ber 2013.Cur­rent­ly at Ma­par there are:

�2 50,000 cit­rus seedlings

�2 20,000 cit­rus plants

�2 15,000 man­go seedlings

�2 2,000 man­go plants

�2 160 graft­ed man­go seedlings with 80 va­ri­eties in­tro­duced from Flori­da.

�2 2,000 av­o­ca­do seedlings

�2 15,000 ba­nana suck­ers.

Ma­haraj said the fa­cil­i­ty is op­er­at­ed by 38 dai­ly paid work­ers and 23 on-the-job trainees. He said the labour ca­pac­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to in­crease with the hir­ing of an ad­di­tion­al 85 dai­ly paid work­ers.