Michelle Loubon

"T&T im­ports 90 per cent of its goat meat from Aus­tralia."

The de­cline of the co­conut in­dus­try by 80 per cent is cat­a­stroph­ic." The Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, Vas­ant Bharath, made these com­ments at a press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Ser­pen­tine Street, St Clair, last week. It was held to out­line the min­istry's vi­sion for agri­cul­ture. "We eat so much goat meat. A Web site said we are the 10th largest pur­chas­er. We need to re­vive goat and sheep rear­ing." He al­so iden­ti­fied plans to re­sus­ci­tate oth­er ar­eas of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor which had al­most en­tire­ly col­lapsed and those in dire need of fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise. Among those in­dus­tries se­vere­ly af­fect­ed were: aqua­cul­ture, co­coa, cit­rus, bee­keep­ing, buf­fa­lyp­so rear­ing and co­conut.

"The de­cline of the co­conut in­dus­try is cat­a­stroph­ic."

He said T&T was im­port­ing co­conut wa­ter from Guyana while the trees that are the pho­to­graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of T&T's trop­i­cal par­adise im­age are be­ing dec­i­mat­ed by Red Palm mites. Apart from co­conut's health ben­e­fits, he said Chi­na was ex­per­i­ment­ing with co­conuts in the area of down­stream in­dus­tries that pro­duce mats, rugs and soaps. Amer­i­can ath­letes grav­i­tate to the drink over a lead­ing sports bev­er­age. Tilapia stock, which is ad­ver­tised as a main course in for­eign restau­rants, had to be up­grad­ed, too. "Tilapia farm­ing has been com­plete­ly de­plet­ed. We need to have growth and in­cen­tives."

Bharath paint­ed a grim pic­ture of the days when "co­coa was king," and the ex­pres­sion "rich as a To­ba­go planter" abound­ed. He lament­ed the de­cline in pro­duc­tion of one of T&T's ma­jor in­dige­nous prod­ucts. "This area has been to­tal­ly ne­glect­ed. Some 20,000 tonnes were har­vest­ed. We are now har­vest­ing 6,000 tonnes. It suf­fered from com­plete ne­glect. Acres have been aban­doned." On the flip side, Bharath boast­ed that T&T pro­duced the finest co­coa that at­tract­ed choco­latiers and buy­ers from all over the world. He laud­ed Dr Steve Ben­nett for his in­put in­to the rear­ing of buf­fa­lyp­so (a cross be­tween a cow and an ox).

Bharath said the meat was much sought af­ter be­cause it had a low-fat con­tent while the rich milk was used in the mak­ing of moz­zarel­la cheese. In 1975, T&T pro­duced 1,000 crates of grape­fruits for ex­ports. The re­verse had tak­en place where the coun­try was now im­port­ing grape­fruit. The trees were al­most wiped out by the Tris­teza virus, the most de­struc­tive dis­ease of cit­rus. "We have to en­sure a Cit­rus Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pro­gramme." Lat­er on, Bharath al­so said once the in­dus­try was ful­ly re­vived and stake­hold­ers' needs–in­clud­ing wa­ter man­age­ment–met, he would not rule out the prospects of agro-tourism.

Agri­cul­ture sec­tor: "chug­ging along"

Bharath said it was nec­es­sary for agri­cul­tur­ists and farm­ers "to view agri­cul­ture as a busi­ness." "We need to de­vel­op it as a busi­ness ven­ture. We need to look at the busi­ness side of agri­cul­ture. You must have the busi­ness acu­men. To make any­thing of it, you have to be or­gan­ised prop­er­ly. "Right now, the sec­tor is chug­ging along. We must or­gan­ise in­dus­tries like a busi­ness." Bharath not­ed T&T's farm­ers were an age­ing pop­u­la­tion.

The ma­jor­i­ty of lo­cal farm­ers were not en­cour­ag­ing their chil­dren to get in­volved in the sec­tor. "It is quite the op­po­site hap­pen­ing in Eu­rope. Eu­ro­pean farm­ers are en­cour­ag­ing their chil­dren to get in­volved. In Eu­rope, they are held in high re­gard. Farm­ers are in the up­per ech­e­lons of so­ci­ety." The im­ple­men­ta­tion of new tech­no­log­i­cal prac­tices and the adap­ta­tion of mod­ern skills, ex­per­tise and knowl­edge would great­ly as­sist in re­mov­ing farm­ers from stick­ing to the "same old path­ways."