Farm­ers took to the streets of the cap­i­tal city yes­ter­day call­ing for the re­moval of Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj who they claimed was de­stroy­ing the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.Farm­ers from Plum Mi­tan, Plum Road, Pineap­ple Fields in Mau­si­ca, Mal­oney, Bon Air, in Arou­ca, Man­zanil­la, Chase Vil­lage, Los Iros, Rio Claro and var­i­ous farm­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions took part in the demon­stra­tion.The farm­ers walked from Wood­ford Square to the Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice, St Clair, where they gave a let­ter to press sec­re­tary Fran­cis Joseph.They al­so walked to the min­istry at Ser­pen­tine Road, St Clair, where they gave a copy of the let­ter to the min­is­ter's sec­re­tary. The let­ter list­ed 18 is­sues.The farm­ers want Vas­ant Bharath to be reap­point­ed as the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter. Ma­haraj re­placed Bharath as the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter in the last Cab­i­net reshuf­fle by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety Dhano Sookoo said the farm­ers have made nu­mer­ous at­tempts to con­tact Ma­haraj by tele­phone and in writ­ing but to no avail. The so­ci­ety, she said, rep­re­sent­ed 86 as­so­ci­a­tions with 12,000 farm­ers.Sookoo said the farm­ers were giv­ing the min­is­ter two weeks to re­spond to their queries.She said one is­sue brought up in the let­ter was how $1.2 bil­lion was spent by the min­istry and noth­ing was achieved.The let­ter ques­tioned the where­abouts of 200 head of goats and cows from the Unit­ed States, why flood re­lief claims were not paid to farm­ers, who were the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the mega-farms and oth­er con­cerns."We want the min­is­ter to tell us what hap­pened to the $1.2 bil­lion that was spent on the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. We want to know where that went. Why do we have to im­port food when our farm­ers here have food rot­ting?" she asked.

Sookoo added: "These are the is­sues you need to ad­dress that are de­stroy­ing the fab­ric of our so­ci­ety and their (farm­ers) liveli­hood is threat­ened."We are com­mit­ted to work but one hand can't clap. We need the right ini­tia­tive for the co-op­er­a­tion. We will fight to pro­tect a sus­tain­able and vi­able sec­tor."She is al­so ques­tion­ing why a cer­tain oil com­pa­ny was giv­en a loan by the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank when farm­ers were turned away."I need you to look in­to these things. Al­so over $50 mil­lion has been giv­en to the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. What were their achieve­ments?" she asked.Pres­i­dent of the Los Iros Farm­ing As­so­ci­a­tion and a di­rec­tor at the So­ci­ety, Chan Sookoo, said there were many is­sues that farm­ers have to deal with that are not be­ing ad­dressed.Chan said lack of wa­ter, poor roads, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny and land set­tle­ment is­sues were a ma­jor con­cern for the farm­ers.

Bon Air Farm­ing As­so­ci­a­tion pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Bri­an-An­tho­ny Dixon said the farm­ers were prey to rob­bers."There is a prob­lem get­ting wa­ter and you have to get up at 2 am to pump it out of a wa­ter­hole and men are wait­ing to rob you," he said.He said farm­ers were pay­ing more than ten times what oth­er busi­ness­es pay to lease an acre of land for farm­ing.Dixon said farm­ers were al­so faced with pest prob­lems and "agouti eat­ing our crops."He al­so point­ed to sev­er­al types of wa­ter­mel­ons that he was grow­ing on his land which showed that the farm­ers were ca­pa­ble of plant­i­ng dif­fer­ent pro­duce.

Min­is­ter's re­sponse

Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj said the protest by the farm­ers was a dis­trac­tion to an on­go­ing crim­i­nal probe."This protest has been or­ches­trat­ed by ASTT and sym­pa­this­ers and does not con­sti­tute the farm­ers," he said.It was arranged, he added, to dis­tract at­ten­tion "from the fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­eties and com­plaints be­fore the Fraud Squad and I would not be dis­tract­ed by non-is­sues. "They are in­ves­ti­gat­ing fi­nan­cial com­plaints un­der the stew­ard­ship of Dhano Sookoo."