JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

More needed to encourage digital agriculture

by

Curtis Williams
2009 days ago
20190917
Farmers harvest Trinidad Moruga Scorpion peppers along the M2 Ring Road, Debe.

Farmers harvest Trinidad Moruga Scorpion peppers along the M2 Ring Road, Debe.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

If T&T’s agri­cul­ture sec­tor has to move for­ward, poli­cies are need­ed for su­per­mar­kets to buy from farm­ers and pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment is al­so nec­es­sary to ad­vise farm­ers on agri­cul­tur­al plan­ning as is suc­cess­ful­ly done in St Lu­cia and Ja­maica, says Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety pres­i­dent Dhanoo Sookoo.

This was among rec­om­men­da­tions Sookoo made to Par­lia­ment’s Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture com­mit­tee yes­ter­day. The team in­ter­viewed of­fi­cials of the So­ci­ety, Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (Fish­eries/Forestry di­vi­sion) on how far non-tra­di­tion­al farm­ing meth­ods—in­clud­ing dig­i­tal agri­cul­ture—have gone.

Sookoo said the so­ci­ety rep­re­sents 10,000 farm­ers. She said the up­com­ing bud­get can be as high as $60b or $70b but it won’t help agri­cul­ture which needs mar­ket­ing, fi­nanc­ing and poli­cies to en­cour­age farm­ers in mod­ern agri­cul­ture tech­niques and the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry al­so needs to do more.

JSC mem­ber Nigel de Fre­itas, tak­ing is­sue with some ADB ap­proach­es, said T&T knows what to do in agri­cul­ture but doesn’t un­der­stand the busi­ness of agri­cul­ture. JSC’s Rush­ton Paray said quan­tum leaps are need­ed since old prac­tices won’t suf­fice for the sec­tor ahead.

So­ci­ety mem­ber Ronald Chan said a gen­er­a­tion gap ex­ists where old­er farm­ers use tra­di­tion­al meth­ods and younger ones are mov­ing to hy­dro­phon­ics and aqua­cul­ture. Sookoo said there are no poli­cies to sup­port tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven agri­cul­ture though the so­ci­ety is work­ing with ADB, UWI and East­ern Caribbean In­sti­tute of Agri­cul­ture and Forestry (Eci­af) to find mech­a­nisms for fi­nanc­ing which would en­cour­age in­vest­ment.

She said fi­nanc­ing and the is­sue of land ten­an­cy need to be sort­ed out. Many farm­ers are in­ter­est­ed in new tech­nol­o­gy, but the ma­jor hin­drance is fi­nanc­ing.

Sookoo said in­ter­est is low since farm­ers most­ly be­lieve in tra­di­tion­al meth­ods and there’s no pol­i­cy to en­sure mar­ket avail­abil­i­ty for goods pro­duced with mod­ern meth­ods which are slight­ly more ex­pen­sive to cul­ti­vate. Sookoo said St Lu­cia has eight su­per­mar­kets and its pri­vate sec­tor runs them. That sec­tor en­cour­ages farm­ers, ad­vis­es on what’s vi­able to plant, does fi­nanc­ing, train­ing and green­house es­tab­lish­ment and buys the pro­duce in a sus­tain­able pro­gramme.

Sookoo said Ja­maica’s San­dals re­sorts have a sim­i­lar arrange­ment. She not­ed Cas­sa­va Bam­my and oth­er Ja­maican dish­es fea­ture more on com­mer­cial Ja­maican menues than French fries.

She said dig­i­tal meth­ods can ad­dress food se­cu­ri­ty, pro­duc­tion and Forex is­sues, but the is­sues need at­ten­tion.

Chan told the JSC that mod­ern prac­tices will take a cou­ple years to get go­ing. He said he learned by tri­al and er­ror since the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry didn’t lead the way and there’s no mod­el farm for in­stance.

Sookoo rec­om­mend­ed a fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nism for UWI/Eci­af grad­u­ates to launch green­hous­es. She sug­gest­ed a fund to sup­port youths who lack land ten­an­cy and al­so sug­gest­ed Gov­ern­ment free-up un­used pack­hous­es for farm­ers to grade goods. Sookoo said a stake­hold­er com­mit­tee—in­clud­ing WASA in­put on wa­ter is­sues—to map the fu­ture is al­so need­ed.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored