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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Rambharat wants more money for agriculture

by

20160726

De­ter­mined to im­prove sup­port for agri­cul­ture in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture­Clarence Ramb­harat yes­ter­day said he will be ask­ing for in­creased fund­ing in the 2016/2017 Bud­get.

He did not give a spe­cif­ic fig­ure but said: "What­ev­er we get, it will be utilised in a way that im­proves what we do for farm­ers and fish­er­men."

Ramb­harat, who spoke to the T&T Guardian on the side­lines of a Re­gion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Tra­di­tion­al Farmer Knowl­edge and In­no­v­a­tive Prac­tices at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, said he is not sat­is­fied with the re­sources avail­able to rur­al farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

"Rur­al com­mu­ni­ties are ser­viced by agri­cul­ture of­fices. We don't have all the tech­ni­cal ca­pac­i­ty and we don't have all the ad­min­is­tra­tive ca­pac­i­ty in terms of de­ci­sion mak­ing. The pri­or­i­ty is to first im­prove phys­i­cal con­di­tions by putting more re­sources, then im­prov­ing the hu­man re­source we have in those of­fices," he said

Ramb­harat, who had ear­li­er de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the event, im­port­ing raw ma­te­ri­als to boost lo­cal food pro­duc­tion is much cheap­er than im­port­ing pro­duce which farm­ers can grow here.

"Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that the pes­ti­cides and her­bi­cides that are im­port­ed are af­ford­able to the farm­ers. At the same time, we are com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that those that have been de­clared to be dan­ger­ous and are still al­lowed in­to T&T are in fact banned. We have pro­grammes in place to en­sure re­duced use of pes­ti­cides and her­bi­cides. We un­der­stand farm­ers would want to use chem­i­cals but we have to use it in a safe way."

Yes­ter­day's con­sul­ta­tion, host­ed by the Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (Car­di), the In­ter Amer­i­ca In­sti­tute for Co-op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA) and Cari­com with fund­ing from the Eu­ro­pean Union, is aimed at gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion from around the re­gion on tra­di­tion­al and in­no­v­a­tive farm­ing prac­tices as part of an ini­tia­tive un­der the In­tra-ACP Agri­cul­tur­al Pol­i­cy Pro­gramme (APP).

Ses­sions in­clude ex­pe­ri­ences from the field in small farm­ing sys­tems, defin­ing 3-4 tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge the­mat­ic ar­eas and good prac­tices and the scope of the re­gion­al sup­port pro­gramme for ac­tion, role of youth and women in agri­cul­ture and the trans­fer of knowl­edge and the role of tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge trans­fer on re­silient farm­ing sys­tems.


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