The Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) is ex­plor­ing link­ages with In­dia in the area of rice pro­duc­tion.

This from the com­pa­ny’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Ian Mitchell, who re­cent­ly re­turned to T&T from the south­ern part of the Asian con­ti­nent.

“We met with a num­ber of in­sti­tu­tions dis­cussing pos­si­bil­i­ties re­lat­ing to rice pro­duc­tion in Trinidad. It is some­thing that we get a lot of licks for be­cause we are con­stant­ly asked, ‘Why do you guys not just give up on rice?’ and our an­swer is sim­ply ‘If we give up then who is go­ing to take up the man­tle?

“For us, we recog­nise there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty as one of the lead­ing agro-proces­sors in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Caribbean,” Mitchell ex­plained.

He made the com­ments at Tues­day’s of­fi­cial sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine for agri­cul­ture re­search and de­vel­op­ment.

Mitchell added it was al­so the com­pa­ny’s du­ty to work with the agri­cul­ture sec­tor and UWI’s Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture to build projects, which have very good po­ten­tial for cit­i­zens of T&T and the wider re­gion.

Among the com­mit­ments com­ing out of the MoU, Mitchell said it in­volved com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and sup­port for ini­tia­tives in an­i­mal feed and pro­duc­tion, grad­u­ate train­ing in­tern­ship pro­grammes and re­fur­bish­ment of the UWI’s Field Sta­tion among oth­er things.

He al­so not­ed there is al­so scope for feed test­ing at that sta­tion, stat­ing that at least three new types of feed were de­vel­oped with­in the last year.

Ad­dress­ing UWI’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Mitchell said, “We would like to work with you on test­ing, en­sur­ing that we get the right sort of re­sults so that we re­main at the front of the class,” Mitchell added, stress­ing that it is crit­i­cal for NFM to achieve mean­ing­ful re­sults

Prin­ci­pal of the UWI, St Au­gus­tine, Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine un­der­scored that re­search and de­vel­op­ment is key to dri­ving a coun­try and its econ­o­my for­ward.

Us­ing the ex­am­ple of Sin­ga­pore, she said, “One of the things they did and did well was to put monies in re­search and de­vel­op­ment. We don’t do that. That’s one of the neg­a­tive bits in terms of how we ap­proach de­vel­op­ment and how we ap­proach in­no­va­tion,” she said.

Stat­ing that col­lab­o­ra­tion is key to dri­ving re­search and de­vel­op­ment, Belle An­toine said the UWI “needs cham­pi­ons” in this re­gard, both in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors.