SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

The on­go­ing de­lay of con­tainer­ised ships cross­ing the Pana­ma Canal is be­gin­ning to af­fect the lo­cal agri­cul­ture sec­tor, as the shelves of some chem­i­cal and fer­tilis­er im­porters and small shops have been run­ning bare.

At least two com­pa­nies, CAS Agri­cul­tur­al Sup­plies and Manuchar Trinidad Ltd, have been feel­ing the pinch of the lin­ger­ing de­lays and warned of low­er yields for farm­ers and high­er cost of food for con­sumers if the drought in the wa­ter­way per­sists next year.

Both com­pa­nies have been im­pact­ed by prof­it loss­es and dwin­dling cus­tomer base as a re­sult of the pile-up of ves­sels wait­ing to tran­sit the canal due to low­er­ing wa­ter lev­els.

They be­lieve cli­mate change is be­gin­ning to im­pact glob­al com­merce.

The Pana­ma Canal, which is one of the world’s key ship­ping routes, is be­ing hob­bled by a lack of rain­fall which has dried up two lakes that feed its artery, plung­ing wa­ter lev­els so low the Pana­ma Canal Au­thor­i­ty has cut the num­ber of ships pass­ing through the wa­ter­way from 36 to 24.

Next Feb­ru­ary, on­ly 18 ves­sels will be al­lowed to cross the route.

The re­duc­tions have al­ready caused hun­dreds of con­tain­er ships to clog up in front of the es­sen­tial links of in­ter­na­tion­al trade which has been pos­ing a prob­lem for every com­mod­i­ty and man­u­fac­tured prod­uct.

Some ves­sels are al­so be­ing al­lowed to car­ry up to 40 per cent less car­go.

The Canal con­nects the Pa­cif­ic and At­lantic Oceans al­low­ing ships to avoid sail­ing around the tip of South Amer­i­ca.

The un­prece­dent­ed dry sea­son has cre­at­ed a cri­sis at the Canal which trades about US$ 270 bil­lion of goods each year. Those ships car­ry items rang­ing from canned and re­frig­er­at­ed foods, lum­ber, steel, ma­chin­ery and equip­ment, grains, cloth­ing, toys, house­hold ap­pli­ances, fur­ni­ture, pe­tro­le­um chem­i­cals and agri­cul­tur­al sup­plies and com­modi­ties.

The cost of ship­ping goods, ex­perts be­lieve, is like­ly to in­crease world­wide while ef­forts to get goods on the shelves of stores this Christ­mas could be slowed.

An­nu­al­ly 14,000 ships use the Canal rep­re­sent­ing six per cent of world trade and is a key link in the sup­ply chain to stores world­wide.

CAS Agri­cul­tur­al Sup­plies di­rec­tor Karl Seep­er­sad said he has been wait­ing for four freight con­tain­ers of chem­i­cals which he pur­chased from Chi­na three months ago.

The Freeport-based com­pa­ny sells its items whole­sale and re­tail. Seep­er­sad said they are out of her­bi­cides, pes­ti­cides, fungi­cides, in­sec­ti­cides and fer­tilis­ers.

“Our shelves are prac­ti­cal­ly emp­ty,” Seep­er­sad com­plained to Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view re­cent­ly.

The un­avail­abil­i­ty of prod­ucts, he said, has been af­fect­ing the op­er­a­tions of his busi­ness. Seep­er­sad al­so point­ed out that if farm­ers do not have chem­i­cals to pro­tect their crops from weeds, dis­eases and pests, their loss­es would be tremen­dous.

“Once yields are re­duced farm­ers will have few­er crops on their hands and this could trig­ger the cost of pro­duce to go up. If this trend con­tin­ues next year, we can ex­pect high­er costs of food. Next year it’s go­ing to be a very dif­fi­cult year. I re­al­ly don’t know.”

Seep­er­sad said some of his cus­tomers have been pay­ing more for these prod­ucts else­where.

Large-scale sweet pota­to farmer Sa­hadeo Boon­doon con­firmed that the price of chem­i­cals has been con­stant­ly “go­ing up” in the last few months.

“The prices jumped dur­ing the Rus­sia and Ukraine war and it nev­er went down. I don’t know if the is­sue in the Pana­ma Canal has been con­tribut­ing to the price hike. We are feel­ing the pinch in our pock­ets ... every day you have to pay more for chem­i­cals and fer­tilis­ers,” Boon­doo said.

The Sun­day Guardian al­so reached out to oth­er farm­ers in Plum Mi­tan and Aranguez who no­ticed an in­crease in costs.

Busi­ness de­vel­op­ment man­ag­er of Manuchar Trinidad Ltd, Nicholas Jen­nings ad­mit­ted that their chem­i­cal com­pa­ny has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing three weeks of de­lay in get­ting sup­plies.

“That has been caus­ing rev­enue loss, a drop in cus­tomer con­fi­dence and our abil­i­ty to guar­an­tee de­liv­ery dates. We have al­so lost some of our cus­tomers.”

Manuchar im­ports be­tween 100 and 200 con­tain­ers of chem­i­cals an­nu­al­ly from Chi­na and In­dia.

They dis­trib­ute to 30 com­pa­nies lo­cal­ly.

He fears the agri­cul­ture sec­tor could face a back­lash with the on­go­ing de­lays.

Jen­nings said Manuchar has been try­ing to find al­ter­na­tive routes to get the prod­ucts faster to them.

“We would get neg­a­tive feed­back from clients when we can’t de­liv­er. How­ev­er, we have been try­ing to source lo­cal­ly to min­imise the im­pact on our clients. But this is un­sus­tain­able. There is on­ly so much that is avail­able.”