Sto­ry by SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Food crop farmer, Ramdeo Boon­doo, is com­plain­ing that the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture is not as ef­fec­tive as it should be in as­sist­ing farm­ers in this coun­try.

Boon­doo, who is al­so the head of the Root and Tu­ber Pro­duc­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (RT­PA), said thieves stole around $2,000 worth of cas­sa­va from a plot of land at Chase Vil­lage on Wednes­day night.

The RT­PA spokesman told Guardian Me­dia that when he ar­rived at the area on Thurs­day morn­ing, he was greet­ed with the sight of a num­ber of up­root­ed cas­sa­va plants.

The cassava field the crop thieves dug up

SHASTRI BOODAN

He said his call to the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad proved fu­tile. He was told that the Squad has one ve­hi­cle, and it was be­ing used in south Trinidad.

The food crop farmer said he was dis­heart­ened at the news, since the plot the crop thieves plun­dered con­tained a num­ber of new va­ri­eties he had been grow­ing in con­junc­tion with the UWI.

Ramdeo Boon­doo said prae­di­al lar­ce­ny is a ma­jor de­ter­rent to young peo­ple de­sirous of get­ting in­to the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, and the au­thor­i­ties at the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry need to take the is­sue se­ri­ous­ly.