RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Moru­ga farm­ers say they’re hard hit by pro­longed drought, Gi­ant African snails and prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, so they’re aban­don­ing their lands and look­ing for con­struc­tion jobs to pay their bills. 

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the San­ta Maria com­mu­ni­ty in Moru­ga last week, farmer Zion Williams-Bal­bosa said the scorch­ing heat in Au­gust and Sep­tem­ber had re­sult­ed in poor yields this month.

“Look at this, the heat cracked the pump­kins and melt­ed them. Plen­ty of my pro­duce spoil,” he said, point­ing to a heap of pump­kins.

Williams-Bal­bosa called on the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry to make rep­re­sen­ta­tion to of­fer farm­ers some aid through the Agri­cul­ture De­vel­op­ment Bank, or grants through the Com­mu­ni­ty Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion (CDRR) Fund.

“This drought af­fect­ing us very bad­ly. We have no crop right now,” he lament­ed.

For those veg­eta­bles which reached ma­tu­ri­ty, Williams-Bal­bosa said, they were poor in qual­i­ty.

“The sun makes them soft. We have many bad ones on ac­count of the heat. There is noth­ing we can do to save the crop. Farm­ers are plant­i­ng in the forests and we have no pond there,” he said.

Say­ing Moru­ga farm­ers felt for­got­ten, Williams-Bal­bosa added, “We are re­al­ly suf­fer­ing. We don’t even have a road to get to our gar­dens. We are for­got­ten by the Gov­ern­ment.”

He al­so said that thieves had been cart­ing off what­ev­er lit­tle crop was left in their fields.

“You can’t even get a bunch of fig on the land any­more. They are thiev­ing every­thing,” he said.

He said the Gi­ant African snails had al­so made cul­ti­va­tion of short crops im­pos­si­ble.

Mean­while, farmer An­ge­lo Guillero said he too had faced loss­es be­cause of the sun.

“This hot sun is worse than rain. Noth­ing is grow­ing in this sun, it stay­ing stunt and we are get­ting no kind of yield. I plant peas, corn, pump­kin, figs and this sun here killed all my crops. The pump­kins dropped out of the vines. All of them de­formed, no­body wants that in the mar­ket,” he said.

Un­able to pay their bills, Guillero said, some farm­ers were now look­ing for al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment.

“Plen­ty of farm­ers are leav­ing gar­den­ing right now be­cause of the weath­er, they have no choice. They can’t do noth­ing bet­ter,” he said.

He added, “If the sun keeps up like this, it will hard­ly have things to sell. It will have famine next year.”

At Pe­nal Rock Road, farmer George Bal­bosa said things were so bad they could not send their chil­dren to school.

“Some of us are fac­ing re­al strug­gles. I have two chil­dren, one go­ing to Christ Col­lege and an­oth­er go­ing to AS­JA Girls’. If one goes to school to­day the oth­er stays home the next day. I can­not af­ford to send them both to school at the same time,” he said.

He said with all their bills and ex­pens­es, work­ing the land was no longer prof­itable.

An­oth­er large-scale farmer who cul­ti­vat­ed ten acres of gin­ger lost his en­tire in­vest­ment be­cause of the scorch­ing heat. His acreages are lo­cat­ed on a slope and there was no way to ir­ri­gate the plants.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­ture So­ci­ety of T&T Dar­ryl Ram­per­sad said farm­ers across the coun­try had lost more than 35 per cent of their crops be­cause of the un­prece­dent­ed hot spell.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein ex­pressed sym­pa­thy for the farm­ers and said he will laise with them with the aim of find­ing so­lu­tions to their is­sues.