Adri­an Boodan

Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath wants all lands that were un­der the con­trol of Ca­roni (1975) Ltd to be re­turned to his min­istry.

Bharath was speak­ing with the me­dia, dur­ing a vis­it to farm­ers in Cunu­pia yes­ter­day. Bharath said when the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion shut down state-owned sug­ar pro­duc­er, the lands were hand­ed to the Min­istry of Fi­nance for dis­pos­al. He said he want­ed to see the stop­ping of all hous­ing de­vel­op­ments start­ed by the for­mer�gov­ern­ment on these lands. Ca­roni lands are some of the most arable in T&T and can be put back to food pro­duc­tion, a move that would great­ly re­duce T&T's food im­port bill, Bharath added. He said T&T should not have to be im­port­ing pro­duce such as fresh veg­eta­bles that can be grown lo­cal­ly. His min­istry�will be look­ing at ways to get wa­ter re­serves in place for next year's dry sea­son so farm­ers would not have to suf­fer if a drought oc­curs sim­i­lar to the one ex­pe­ri­enced this year, he said. Bharath said he would be look­ing at ways to get the prae­di­al lar­ce­ny squad ful­ly op­er­a­tional to en­sure that farm­ers are not robbed of their pro­duce or live­stock.

One of the com­plaints the min­is­ter said he re­ceived from for­mer Ca­roni work­ers who re­ceived two-acre plots of Ca­roni lands for agri­cul­ture was that they live too far away from the land. Be­cause of this they were un­able to mon­i­tor their pro­duce and many had their crops stolen. Bharath said his min­istry would in­tro­duce a pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign to get home gar­den­ing go­ing. This would come through the nec­es­sary dis­sem­i­na­tion of in­for­ma­tion about the min­istry's pro­grammes and in­cen­tives, he added. Ex­pand­ed home gar­dens would help to re­duce the food im­port bill and in turn help to low­er the in­fla­tion rate, ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter. Bharath said he plans to vis­it the mega farms set up by the PNM next week on which a large amount of mon­ey had been spent, but on­ly two have start­ed churn­ing out pro­duce. He said the fate of these mega farms would be de­ter­mined af­ter he has con­sult­ed with farm­ers and mem­bers of oth­er agri­cul­tur­al en­ti­ties as to what would be the best di­rec­tion go­ing for­ward.

While there are no im­me­di­ate plans to re­vive the sug­ar in­dus­try, Bharath be­lieves that it can be prof­itable if done through mech­a­ni­sa­tion. He made it clear, how­ev­er, that the gov­ern­ment would not be get­ting in­volved in things just for the sake of it.�Bharath said he was al­so work­ing on a plan to get com­pen­sa­tion for farm­ers who lost their crops through dis­as­ters, with­in one month. He said this process had tak­en up to two years. He al­so point­ed out that the au­thor­i­ties at his min­istry need to be­come more vig­i­lant in their mon­i­tor­ing of farm­ers and record-keep­ing. Anil Ram­nar­ine, head of the Cunu­pia Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, com­plained to Bharat about a short­age of labour and the price of fer­tilis­er. Bharat said lo­cal­ly-pro­duced fer­tilis­er was sell­ing at a high cost. He said the labour short­age sky­rock­et­ed when peo­ple grav­i­tat­ed away from agri­cul­ture and chose in­stead to work on gov­ern­ment so­cial re­lief pro­grammes for two hours a day for a full day's pay. Ram­nar­ine said a lot of farm­ers had to re­sort to mech­a­nised farm­ing to fill the void cre­at­ed by the labour short­age.