Following three days of regional collaboration, the Agri-Investment Forum and Expo has concluded. But Professor Dr Wayne Ganpat, former Dean of the Faculty of Food and Agriculture at the University of the West Indies, has called for more focus on domestic food production.
The former UWI Dean told Guardian Media during an interview, that while he lauds the need for collaboration between this country and its regional counterparts—namely Guyana, he said those in authority must look at the agriculture sector domestically to ensure stable food markets.
“There had been several attempts before to get food producing regionally in Guyana and other countries, including Suriname and Belize. I think this is the third effort and I really wish this will be successful... but countries should not leave their domestic food production behind,” Professor Ganpat said.
He added, “We need large quantities of land, which Guyana and Suriname have. Trinidad farmers can produce all the vegetables we want, the fresh fruit market and even some root crops, but you need the land for pasture, you need land for tree crops, for the value-added. And then on the other hand, who is going to do the value-added, are we going to put it in the hands of a few large value-added companies?”
With the Government’s plan to reduce the food import bill by 25 per cent by 2025, Professor Ganpat lauds this attempt.
He, however, suggested this be done with a greater focus on local food production.
“There has been very little effort over the years to support domestic production of food, across several governments. Farmers are crying out to us for seeds, reduction in prices for fertilisers, new seeds. Now given what I heard, the Prime Minister said that you need to ramp up the technologies and support them. The University of the West Indies faculty for agriculture have to have all the technologies. It is just the investment to get it going and people to fund us to do it beyond the classroom and into the fields, but we have the technologies for greenhouse agriculture, we have the technologies for fishing houses, we have technologies for doing precision agriculture, value-added.”
He continued, “We cannot leave alone domestic production of food. We need to support our farmers whether it is at the same time going to Guyana, we are going to be leaving a large percentage—100,000 people or more livelihoods on the breadline.”
Professor Dr Ganpat said he hopes this country does not rely too heavily on any one country again, as this could eventually lead to more problems.
“I’m also concerned that we’re really talking a lot about Guyana. If you remember, Trinidad could have fed itself. When the oil industry came in, everybody exited the agriculture sector, going to the oil industry. So, I’m watching on the horizon that Guyana, why are we putting a lot of effort into Guyana, a lot of money on investment? Guyana is on the verge of becoming another energy economy. If perchance wages rise in the energy sector people are probably going to leave the agricultural sector, that is proven in the theory, people will leave the agricultural sector and go into the energy sector and what will be our outcome, we would be right back to where we are. So we need to diversify, spread it across a couple of other countries in the region and fix it on domestic production.”
