RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The clo­sure of schools and restau­rants is hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing rip­ple ef­fect on farm­ers who are now strug­gling to find buy­ers for their pro­duce.

At Rock Road, Pe­nal, farmer Rakesh Man­ick said he had 450 heads of let­tuce left and no one to buy.

Man­ick said he was fear­ful about go­ing to the Debe mar­ket to whole­sale his pro­duce be­cause con­gre­gat­ing could put him at risk for COVID-19.

Man­ick said usu­al­ly he pro­vides 1,000 heads of let­tuce to a sin­gle sup­pli­er who sells it to restau­rants and su­per­mar­kets. How­ev­er, most of the restau­rants in South Trinidad have been forced to close be­cause peo­ple are no longer din­ing out.

“I have sold a few hun­dred heads but I still have 450 heads to sell and I do not have a buy­er,” Man­ick said.

An­oth­er ven­dor Jam­raj Ho­sein said he too was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in sell­ing his chive and chadon beni.

“I don’t know what to do with my crop. I have no­body to sell to. I plan to put some of it on my van and sell it at the road­side but my wife thinks it is un­safe to be in the pub­lic at this time,” Ho­sein said.

A source at the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny said they have re­ceived scores of phone calls from farm­ers ask­ing for as­sis­tance in sell­ing their crops.

“We are doc­u­ment­ing a list of all the farm­ers and their crops and we are try­ing to link them with po­ten­tial buy­ers. We have had nu­mer­ous calls. The prob­lem is many peo­ple are not will­ing to come to the mar­ket to drop off their pro­duce be­cause of the risk of COVID-19,” the source added.

Mean­while, farm­ers in cen­tral Trinidad said they too have de­vised their own means to sell pro­duce left be­hind be­cause of the clo­sure of restau­rants.

Large scale farmer An­der­son Singh, of Con­nec­tor Road said, “We have set up a lot of road­side stalls and peo­ple are buy­ing their pro­duce and not get­ting out of their cars. Peo­ple are not com­ing to the mar­kets and we are hear­ing that they may have to shut down the Cen­tral mar­ket.”

He ad­vised south­ern farm­ers to al­so do the same, not­ing that it may al­so be a good idea for the Gov­ern­ment to set up des­ig­nat­ed ar­eas where farm­ers can come to sell un­der strict guide­lines.

Singh said he was ex­pect­ing agri­cul­tur­al in­puts to be­come scarce in three months.

“Fer­tilis­ers, in­sec­ti­cides and fungi­cides come in from Chi­na, Italy, Bel­gium and we need those to pro­duce our crops. If this be­comes scarce we need to start cul­ti­vat­ing oth­er crops like ground pro­vi­sions, cas­sa­va, sweet pota­to, yam and ed­does,” he added.

He not­ed that dasheen bush is al­so a good crop to plant to sup­ple­ment a fam­i­ly’s food sup­ply.

Singh ex­plained that every­one has to go back to eat­ing lo­cal. He said the $5 bil­lion an­nu­al food im­port bill will have to be cut.

Mean­while, agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj said gov­ern­ment must move swift­ly to put a food cri­sis plan in place.

“While there is some da­ta avail­able through NAMDE­V­CO and per­haps the min­istry, the sec­tor is not struc­tured in a man­ner for us to know at a mo­ment’s no­tice, in an in­ven­to­ry style, the vol­ume, va­ri­ety and ge­o­graph­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion of all our lo­cal­ly-grown and raised food sup­plies,” Ma­haraj said.

He added, “In the ab­sence of such or­gan­i­sa­tion, in­di­vid­ual farm­ers will seek to pro­tect their liveli­hoods by hav­ing to scam­per to se­cure buy­ers and mar­kets, open­ing them to ex­ploita­tion, loss­es, dis­en­chant­ment and more dan­ger­ous­ly, un­der­in­vest­ment in the short and medi­um term. Com­bined, it sug­gests that our ex­perts should be con­sid­er­ing price, pro­duc­tion, and mar­ket volatil­i­ty re­sult­ing in food chain cri­sis.”

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat said he will con­sid­er oth­er op­tions to fa­cil­i­tate farm­ers.

“I have been say­ing this every­day. The farm­ers and oth­er mar­kets are be­ing kept open. I would add oth­ers of I have to and NAMDE­V­CO is fa­cil­i­tat­ing all reg­is­tered farm­ers who would like to sell,” he said.