Shal­iza Has­sanali

At least 80 per cent of the goods on the shelves of our su­per­mar­kets are im­port­ed. And this has con­tributed to the rise in our coun­try's food im­port bill from $2 bil­lion in 2006 to a stag­ger­ing $4 bil­lion. Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath plans to re­duce this fig­ure by half in 2015. The task is daunt­ing but Bharath said it has to be done if we want to see cheap­er food prices, a re­duc­tion in food in­fla­tion, ob­tain food se­cu­ri­ty and a slash in our grow­ing food im­port bill.

On Mon­day, Bharath un­veiled a Na­tion­al Food Pro­duc­tion Ac­tion Plan 2012- 2015 in Ch­aguara­mas. Bharath said there was a grow­ing con­cern and an alarm by Gov­ern­ments con­cern­ing food se­cu­ri­ty, ris­ing food prices, food price volatil­i­ty, de­clin­ing pro­duc­tion lev­els due to cli­mate change, ris­ing de­mand be­cause of eco­nom­ic and pop­u­la­tion growth in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries and pres­sure on food sup­plies due to the in­creased de­mand for bio­fu­els.

The in­crease in glob­al food prices has the po­ten­tial to ad­verse­ly im­pact lo­cal in­fla­tion, Bharath said, due to our large food im­port bill which in 2010 amount­ed to 10.6 per cent of to­tal im­ports.

A tight rope

Bharath said T&T was on a tight rope as far as food se­cu­ri­ty is con­cerned. The Ac­tion Plan-which is premised on the pur­suit of in­creas­ing the coun­try's food se­cu­ri­ty-has tar­get­ed the ramp­ing up of pro­duc­tion of sta­ples, veg­eta­bles, legumes and puls­es, fruits, live­stock and aqua­cul­ture. An in­crease in rice, cas­sa­va, sweet pota­toes, dasheen ed­does and bread­fruit are al­so on the cards.

It is against this back­ground, Bharath said, that a tar­get has been set to re­duce im­port­ed sta­ples by val­ues rang­ing be­tween 25 to 100 per cent over the next five years. Be­tween 2005 to 2009, Bharath ex­plained, the im­port of sta­ples av­er­aged 236,700 tonnes to a val­ue of $694 mil­lion (TT) an­nu­al­ly. These fig­ures rep­re­sent 20 per cent by val­ue and 29 per cent by quan­ti­ty of our to­tal food im­port bill.

T&T pro­duces on­ly eight per cent of the re­quired sta­ples, which Bharath said was con­sid­ered to be high­ly un­ac­cept­able. Bharath said a tar­get has been set to re­duce im­port­ed sta­ples by val­ues rang­ing be­tween 25 to 100 per cent over the next five years. Last month the Cen­tral Bank in­di­cat­ed that head­line in­fla­tion of re­tail prices rose to 6.8 per cent in Jan­u­ary 2012 from 5.3 per cent in De­cem­ber 2011.

The con­tin­u­ing rise in food prices was the main rea­son be­hind the pick up in the head­line in­fla­tion rate. The in­crease in the food in­dex was led main­ly by fruits, veg­eta­bles and fish, which rose by 62.4 per cent, 7.5 per cent and 9.1 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly, in the 12 months to Jan­u­ary 2012. Bharath said food in­fla­tion has been oc­cur­ring main­ly due to the rise in wheat, corn and soya on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

"If I can sub­sti­tute a lot of these im­ports with lo­cal­ly grown pro­duce it will re­duce the cost of food." Bharath said at no time T&T should have gluts and short­ages of crops. "If we agree to take all com­modi­ties from farm­ers, which is what we want to do, there will be no rea­son for them not to look at the agri­cul­ture sec­tor as a busi­ness."

Bee­hive of busi­ness­men

Bharath said what will dri­ve the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try are peo­ple who have been look­ing on, main­ly en­tre­pre­neurs who want to in­vest and make mon­ey. "We al­ready have a lot of peo­ple lined up...busi­ness peo­ple who are look­ing on." At least 30,000 acres of pri­vate and State lands, Bharath said can be al­lo­cat­ed to take agri­cul­ture for­ward.

Al­ready, 3,000 acres of land have been iden­ti­fied for rice cul­ti­va­tion, which will be an­nounced short­ly. The plan, Bharath said, can be achieved but need­ed ag­gres­sive work year-to-year. "This will put pres­sure and bur­den us but it has to be re­alised." Hav­ing un­der­tak­en sev­er­al tree plant­i­ng ex­er­cis­es in pri­ma­ry schools, Bharath said, his aim was to get young chil­dren on board. "If we could ex­cite the young ones in agri­cul­ture half the bat­tle would have been won."

NF­FA-a step in the right di­rec­tion

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Food­crop Ter­rence Hay­wood said while we have been seen a grad­ual in­crease in food prices over the years, he at­trib­uted this to high cost of im­puts, main­ly im­port­ed chem­i­cals and fer­tilis­ers. Gov­ern­ment needs to ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion, he added. Hay­wood said farm­ers need­ed to form a co-op­er­a­tive to im­port their own chem­i­cals and not re­ly on chem­i­cal shops.

"If we im­port our own chem­i­cals ob­vi­ous­ly this will re­duce the cost of food." Hay­wood said de­mand and sup­ply al­so con­tribute to food in­fla­tion. "We have to come up with a plan to en­sure that farm­ers plant not the same crops but a va­ri­ety year round. "When de­mand out­weighs sup­ply this leads to sky­rock­et­ing food prices." Hay­wood said the ac­tion plan was a step in the right di­rec­tion, one which he en­dors­es.

Pro­duc­tion tar­gets com­modi­ties

Cur­rent Con­sump­tion / Cur­rent Pro­duc­tion/ By 2015 (tonnes)

Rice 33,636 2,273 7,500

Cit­rus 32,271 1,537 1,614

Pi­geon peas 802 130 160

Sweet pota­to 7,000 3,150 13,090

Tilapia 112 22 270

Cas­sa­va 4,500 5,454 18,182

Pineap­ple 462 462 700

Paw paw 1,716 1,716 3,432

Dairy Cat­tle 75,864 4,300 5,650

Bo­di 928 970 1,100

Hot pep­pers 423 710 1,800

Pump­kin 485 1,790 1,950

Me­l­on­gene 436 540 586

Ochro 921 940 1,000

Date from Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice

Re­tail prices Wgt 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Dasheen 454g 4.59 4.95 4.87 6.00 4.92

Toma­toes 454g 6.52 6.29 6.54 8.01 7.11

Pump­kin 454g 2.15 1.96 2.01 2.59 2.51

Me­l­on­gene 454g 3.22 3.47 3.17 4.87 4.27

Cab­bage 454g 4.20 4.29 4.40 5.12 4.83

Cu­cum­ber 454g 2.42 2.79 3.47 4.14 3.71

Let­tuce (head) 4.07 4.41 4.86 5.23 5.54

Car­rots 454g 4.88 4.97 5.24 5.46 4.92

Callaloo bush (bund) 3.32 3.86 4.33 4.49 5.00

Yam 454g 4.60 3.76 4.32 5.34 5.49

Dasheen 454g 4.59 4.95 4.87 6.00 4.92

Chive (with thyme) 2.18 1.58 2.05 2.38 2.72

Rice 2kg 12.06 12.15 12.42 19.28 20.93

Live chick­en 454g 4.21 4.59 5.42 5.93 6.05

Split peas 454g 1.98 2.17 2.79 4.00 4.08

Or­ange (large) 1.03 1.10 1.45 1.32 1.67