Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

A ma­jor ef­fort by the Gov­ern­ment, crop and live­stock farm­ers, whole­salers, re­tail­ers and the pri­vate sec­tor to re­place a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the $4 bil­lion spent an­nu­al­ly on food im­ports is one means of gen­er­at­ing in­ter­nal eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and do­ing so in the short to medi­um term.

That the Cen­tral Bank has now of­fi­cial­ly called the re­ces­sion, maybe that will give the im­pe­tus to the search for gen­er­at­ing in­ter­nal eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Stim­u­lat­ing agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion is one of two ma­jor pos­si­bil­i­ties put for­ward in last week's col­umn to get the econ­o­my mov­ing, the oth­er be­ing the fill­ing of the need for a re­port­ed 160,000 homes by a range of so­cial and eco­nom­ic class­es. In the in­stance of plan­ning and im­ple­ment­ing an agri­cul­tur­al food re­place­ment ini­tia­tive, it could be our last chance to pre­vent a full-scale es­cape from agri­cul­ture.

As ad­vo­cat­ed last week, the im­me­di­ate de­vel­op­ment of a land use pol­i­cy to de­mar­cate ar­eas to be re­served for food pro­duc­tion is vi­tal. How­ev­er, there ex­ists a farm­ing and live­stock sec­tor to be­gin the thrust in­to food pro­duc­tion.

The prob­lems of the sec­tor and the ar­eas in which the farm­ing and live­stock com­mu­ni­ty need sup­port have been ar­tic­u­lat­ed over and over through the decades. Land tenure rights; agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads; fis­cal sup­port for food pro­duc­tion as ar­tic­u­lat­ed in the bud­get state­ment 2016; pro­tec­tion against prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, ad­e­quate arrange­ments for whole­sale and re­tail mar­ket­ing and a range of well-known prob­lems have been cry­ing out for at­ten­tion.

Al­lied to food pro­duc­tion is ex­pand­ing the hor­ti­cul­tur­al sec­tor. The de­vel­op­ment and en­hance­ment of agro-in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion is an­oth­er sub-sec­tor of agri­cul­ture that can be ex­pand­ed and con­tribute not on­ly to the in­ter­nal econ­o­my, but what the econ­o­mists re­fer to as the ex­oge­nous (ex­ter­nal for ex­port) sec­tor.

The gov­ern­ment has changed the board and ap­point­ed as chair­man an ex­pe­ri­enced for­mer pub­lic ser­vant agri­cul­tur­al­ist to the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank. The ex­pec­ta­tion must be that ac­tion will be­gin to take place in re­la­tion to the pro­duc­tive and or­gan­ised fi­nanc­ing of food pro­duc­tion.

Ex­per­tise and re­search to sup­port farm­ers through ex­ten­sion ser­vices have been pro­duced for decades by the Fac­ul­ty of Agri­cul­ture at UWI, St Au­gus­tine; many such per­sons are said to end up in bu­reau­crat­ic jobs at the Min­istry. The qual­i­ty of mar­ket fa­cil­i­ties is in des­per­ate need of up­grade to make them at­trac­tive places for con­sumers to shop.

To­ba­go, with its tourism base (and we shall come to that in a mo­ment) can be a cen­tral el­e­ment of the food pro­duc­tion pro­gramme.

But here again, time is not on the side of ac­tion as the gen­er­a­tions who have tra­di­tion­al­ly been in­volved in agri­cul­ture in To­ba­go have left town, many can no longer en­gage in agri­cul­ture and the young are sell­ing-off farm lands to join the cash econ­o­my.

As there was in the 1960s, there has to be a cam­paign to in­form con­sumers; one to as­sist with the trans­for­ma­tion of tastes and habits has to be adopt­ed; the re-cul­ti­va­tion of aban­doned es­tates is need­ed–an ef­fort to pre­vent many from be­ing turned in­to hous­ing es­tates and even shop­ping malls is nec­es­sary.

Of course it will take more than ar­tic­u­lat­ing such mat­ters in a news­pa­per col­umn to get the job done. But that is what an eco­nom­ic ad­vi­so­ry team is there for to re­search and de­vel­op a sec­tor which can eat in­to the $4 bil­lion dol­lar food im­port bill to gen­er­ate a range of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties.

Turn­ing to the tourism in­dus­try, here is an area that can be en­hanced to func­tion as part of in­ter­nal de­vel­op­ment and al­so to earn for­eign ex­change for the econ­o­my. Al­ready, 500,000 Trinida­di­ans go to To­ba­go an­nu­al­ly. De­vel­op­ing the Manzinil­la/Ma­yaro beach­es, the longest strips of qual­i­ty beach­es in the coun­try, is wait­ing to hap­pen as the Mara­cas/Las Cuevas ar­eas con­tin­ue to be over­crowd­ed and lim­it­ed in the range of leisure ac­tiv­i­ties which can take place there.

An in­ter­nal tourism mar­ket can be­gin to ex­pand in these times when for­eign ex­change can be­come hard to come by and or af­ford­ed by lo­cals and can as­sured­ly staunch the out­flow of na­tion­als uti­liz­ing scare for­eign re­serves.

As an earn­er of for­eign ex­change the lo­cal tourism in­dus­try is not mere­ly un­der-de­vel­oped, it's un­de­vel­oped. The strat­e­gy of us­ing Trinidad as an at­trac­tion for cul­tur­al tourism and To­ba­go for the va­ca­tion­ing tourist of the leisure and eco type va­ri­ety has been stat­ed and planned for in some form or the oth­er for a cou­ple decades now.

Lit­tle has been done to one de­vel­op the po­ten­tial or the va­ri­ety of prod­ucts and the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture need­ed to achieve the ob­jec­tive of a full-fledged tourism in­dus­try. At the re­cent State of the In­dus­try Tourism Con­fer­ence of the Caribbean Tourism Or­gan­i­sa­tion the ex­perts ad­vo­cat­ed that Caribbean tourism des­ti­na­tions ex­pand the mar­kets from which they source vis­i­tors. Chi­na and South Amer­i­ca with a fo­cus on Brazil are said to have re­al mar­ket po­ten­tial.

Many Caribbean tourism des­ti­na­tions with lit­tle more than sea and sand have de­vel­oped as ma­jor warm-weath­er venues. Cu­ra­cao, an es­sen­tial­ly dry is­land has cre­at­ed and de­vel­oped a range of at­trac­tions to host 750,000 vis­i­tors an­nu­al­ly; To­ba­go gets 50,000 stay-over vis­i­tors and an­oth­er 90,000 on the cruise lin­ers.

What I have out­lined are ideas and pos­si­bil­i­ties none of which are par­tic­u­lar­ly new; re­search to seek-out the de­tails of pos­si­bil­i­ties, plan­ning for what is pos­si­ble and prof­itable and im­ple­men­ta­tion of plans are the chal­lenges ahead.The gov­ern­ment has to sig­nal that it is do­ing some­thing to stim­u­late the econ­o­my.