To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?Last week, Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Pe­ter Tay­lor de­clared the bat­tle on food prices won. While cus­tomers at su­per­mar­kets all over T&T raised their heads from ex­am­in­ing price stick­ers in sur­prise at this new rev­e­la­tion from gov­ern­men­tal sur­veys and analy­sis, it re­mains clear that the war con­tin­ues. While the yard­stick used by the min­is­ter may have been the sharp de­cline in food in­fla­tion re­port­ed by the Cen­tral Bank late last month, T&T re­mains be­hind on a more crit­i­cal mea­sure–that of ful­fill­ing its ca­pac­i­ty for lo­cal­ly pro­duced food. As the lan­guage on agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment evolves, the newest word to be em­ployed in the lex­i­con of lo­cal farm­ing is "sexy." The de­scrip­tion was in­voked by vis­it­ing Vin­cent­ian agri­cul­tur­ist Jethro Greene in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian.

"There has been a lot of fo­cus on oil, en­er­gy and tourism.

This is an ex­cit­ing time for agri­cul­ture. Agri­cul­ture is big busi­ness. We need to make it spicy and sexy," said the lo­cal foods evan­ge­list. An­nounc­ing a new award for agri­cul­ture fo­cused-jour­nal­ism of­fered by the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture and the Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search In­sti­tute, for­mer Sun­day Guardian ed­i­tor Dr Kris Ram­per­sad not­ed that it was hoped that the com­pe­ti­tion would "help us un­der­stand that agri­cul­ture is as sexy as oth­er beats." The Prime Min­is­ter didn't in­voke the "s" word when he spoke to en­tre­pre­neurs at the Prime Min­is­ter's Ex­port Awards in Sep­tem­ber, but he did ob­serve that the coun­try "con­tin­ues to have great ca­pac­i­ty for food pro­duc­tion. My ad­min­is­tra­tion has tak­en sig­nif­i­cant steps for the im­prove­ment of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor."

Among those ini­tia­tives is an in­crease in the bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for agri­cul­ture de­vel­op­ment and the well-pro­mot­ed mod­el farm projects in Ch­aguara­mas which have sup­plied min­is­ters with over­sized pro­duce to show off in Par­lia­ment. The Gov­ern­ment could earn some re­al stripes by turn­ing the in­crease in fi­nan­cial re­sources to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and its first re­al suc­cess­es on the ground in­to lever points for re­al change in the busi­ness. The re­al­i­ty at soil lev­el in T&T re­mains grim for most lo­cal farm­ers, who are still wait­ing for the new and im­proved ac­cess roads that were promised in the 2009 bud­get. It's worth not­ing that the most her­ald­ed ini­tia­tives in agri­cul­ture have come in in­ten­sive, sci­ence-fo­cused projects that make use of new tech­nolo­gies in grow box, con­tainer­ised and hy­dro­pon­ics sys­tems that in­crease yields per square foot sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Potash Cor­po­ra­tion through lo­cal arm PCS Ni­tro­gen es­tab­lished a mod­el farm specif­i­cal­ly to share new tech­niques of cul­ti­va­tion with lo­cal farm­ers, among the key cus­tomers of its fer­til­iz­er prod­ucts. Old-school, land-in­ten­sive farm­ing hasn't re­ceived the same lev­el of de­vel­op­ment-fo­cused at­ten­tion and in the Ca­roni basin is­sues of flood­ing and land tenure re­main prick­ly points of con­tention be­tween the Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter and the farm­ers who have been work­ing these lands for decades. It isn't as if the Gov­ern­ment isn't aware of what it needs to do to deep­en the com­mit­ment to agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion in T&T; farm­ers have been telling them what they need for years now. Is there the will to pur­sue con­crete de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives in par­al­lel with the new next gen­er­a­tion farm­ing projects?

How will the su­per­farms project, which was launched with the award of four li­cences in Jan­u­ary to Su­per­mix Feeds, Tech­nol­o­gy Farms Ltd, Two Broth­ers Cor­po­ra­tion of Guyana, and Caribbean Chem­i­cals Ltd co­ex­ist with lega­cy farm­ers? The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance ar­tic­u­lat­ed the projects in the 2009-2010 bud­get that should be com­mand­ing the Gov­ern­ment's at­ten­tion in the com­ing months if it hopes to de­liv­er re­al change in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. Min­is­ter Tesheira ac­cu­rate­ly iden­ti­fied the press­ing need for ac­cess road de­vel­op­ment and im­prove­ment, prob­lems with prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, the high cost of agri­cul­tur­al in­puts, the is­sues with fi­nanc­ing in the sec­tor and the need to reg­u­larise farm­ers work­ing on state lands and the im­por­tance of flood con­trol. It re­mains for her col­league, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Pig­gott, to turn the in­creas­es in his bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion in­to re­al change in the sec­tor and to bring sexy back to agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment.