Even as some mem­bers of the pub­lic have be­gun to pre­pare for the up­com­ing dry sea­son which is fore­cast to be harsh and drought-like, one Cunu­pia farmer is con­cerned that not enough ad­vice is be­ing giv­en to agri­cul­tur­al stake­hold­ers who will be among those most af­fect­ed by wa­ter short­ages.

One of T&T’s largest rice pro­duc­ers, Richard Singh, of War­renville, said he had al­ready been forced to scale back rice pro­duc­tion and had be­gun to cul­ti­vate corn in­stead as one way of main­tain­ing a steady in­come.

Singh, who usu­al­ly plants around 300 acres of rice every Oc­to­ber, said he had on­ly plant­ed ten acres so far.

He re­vealed there were var­i­ous strate­gies farm­ers could em­ploy in a bid to con­serve and even re­cy­cle wa­ter, but stressed they were cost­ly with at least one method cost­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars.

“Many of us have the abil­i­ty to store wa­ter but many of us don’t have the re­sources to in­vest in that sort of in­fra­struc­ture,” he said.

Many farm­ers, he said, were al­ready feel­ing the ef­fects of the dry sea­son, Singh said.

“Dur­ing a nor­mal dry sea­son, Ca­roni farm­ers would use wa­ter from the Guaya­mare Riv­er to aid in the ir­ri­ga­tion of crops.”

“We had asked for a pump un­der for­mer Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath (of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion), to be put in the Ca­roni Riv­er to pump wa­ter through a chan­nel straight in­to the Guaya­mare Riv­er so we would have a con­stant sup­ply of wa­ter.”

How­ev­er, Singh said when the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice, this was stopped and the pump was re­moved.

Singh warned the pub­lic to ex­pect in­creased prices for agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce in the com­ing months and ad­vised home­own­ers to brace for short­ages in lo­cal­ly grown pro­duce.

Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety Pres­i­dent Dhano Sookoo echoed his con­cerns.

“As a coun­try, we are faced with heavy flood­ing as soon as we have one-hour of rain, and as soon as we en­ter the dry sea­son with­in eight weeks or so, we com­plain there is no wa­ter for agri­cul­ture.”

Sookoo said al­though they con­tin­ued to clam­our for a prop­er wa­ter man­age­ment pro­gramme, the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties re­fused to heed their re­quests for new poli­cies to be in­tro­duced which would mit­i­gate the ef­fects of wa­ter short­ages for the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

She too urged the pub­lic to pre­pare.

“For ex­treme­ly high food prices and in some ar­eas, the non-avail­abil­i­ty of food.”

“Now with this cri­sis that is ex­pect­ed and the lack of in­fra­struc­ture over the last few years in agri­cul­ture, we are ob­vi­ous­ly go­ing to have to im­port more and this will lead to our food im­port bill in­creas­ing,” she said.

Adding that un­em­ploy­ment in this sec­tor could al­so in­crease as a re­sult of the is­sues list­ed above, Sookoo con­clud­ed, “It is not too late to put things in place now.”

In a bid to con­serve wa­ter, Sookoo ad­vised farm­ers to utilise drip ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems in­stead of over­head ir­ri­ga­tion; to im­ple­ment a strict wa­ter ex­trac­tion ro­ta­tion to en­sure that all farm­ers would be able to cul­ti­vate pro­duce, and even stag­ger their pro­duc­tion times so there would be a steady sup­ply of pro­duce through­out the sea­son.