No need to pan­ic, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (SVG) will be able to make its next ex­port of root crops to T&T.

Next week Mon­day is an im­por­tant day for SVG as it is the day they are sched­uled to ship goods to their main trad­ing part­ner T&T.

But with the re­cent erup­tions of the La Soufrière vol­cano and the re­sul­tant lay­ers of ash blan­ket­ing the coun­try, there are grow­ing con­cerns about whether or not they will be able to make that ship­ment to T&T.

How­ev­er, Saboto Cae­sar, the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Forestry, Fish­eries, Rur­al Trans­for­ma­tion, In­dus­try and Labour in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, be­lieves that the coun­try will be able to make its ship­ment even in the face of the on­go­ing sit­u­a­tion tak­ing place.

“I want the peo­ple of T&T to know that we in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, we have a long-stand­ing re­la­tion­ship with your peo­ple and your peo­ple have sup­port­ed us over the years in terms of sup­ply­ing a ready mar­ket and we are go­ing to do what­ev­er it takes to get our op­er­a­tions up and run­ning so that we can con­tin­ue the ex­port trade to T&T,” he said.

And Cae­sar be­lieves his op­ti­mism is not mis­placed be­cause St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and its peo­ple are “re­silient.”

Cae­sar told the Busi­ness Guardian that the fact that goods were shipped to Bar­ba­dos on Mon­day amid the vol­canic ac­tiv­i­ty is ev­i­dence of that re­silience.

“In fact when I tell you I was moved to tears when I saw that in spite of all that is go­ing on per­sons still went and pack­aged goods and took it to the port. If that is not re­silience then noth­ing else is,” he said.

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Clarence Ramb­harat said that even if the im­ports from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines are dis­rupt­ed, he be­lieves that lo­cal pro­duc­tion will be able to fill the gap.

“We have seen in­creased lo­cal pro­duc­tion in a num­ber of pro­duce cat­e­gories. Some cus­tomers pre­fer the Cari­com im­ports. We will lose sup­plies from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines but I be­lieve lo­cal pro­duc­tion will fill the gap,” Ramb­harat said.

“We are still work­ing with oth­er Cari­com sup­pli­ers to see the ex­tent of their dis­rup­tions. There is how­ev­er an abun­dance of pro­duce in the lo­cal mar­ket,” he said.

Ex­ports to T&T from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines are val­ued at around $50 mil­lion.

“Now our biggest trad­ing part­ner is T&T and there is a cadre of traf­fick­ers who have been trad­ing with T&T for the last 60 some­thing years,” Cae­sar said.

The items that are shipped to T&T are root crops in­clud­ing dasheen, tan­nia, yam, as well as gin­ger.

As a re­sult of the ac­tiv­i­ty tak­ing place at La Soufrière, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines was zoned in­to four colour-cod­ed ar­eas based on the threat from the vol­cano.

The north of the is­land where the La Soufrière vol­cano is lo­cat­ed was la­belled the red zone, while the south of the is­land, in­clud­ing the cap­i­tal Kingstown was la­belled the green zone.

“Most of the goods we ex­port to T&T doesn’t come from the red zone but the thing about it is, at the end of the day, food pro­duc­tion has a quan­ti­ta­tive fig­ure to it and there is food that has to be con­sumed lo­cal­ly and there will be com­pet­ing mar­kets,” he said.

“But one thing I can tell you is the net­work of traders to T&T is very well es­tab­lished in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines and we are go­ing to re­build quick­ly with the sup­port that we have been re­ceiv­ing, we are a very re­silient set of peo­ple and (Mon­day) we ex­port­ed to Bar­ba­dos so that is an in­di­ca­tion that we are not closed to ex­port be­cause we have ex­port­ed this week to Bar­ba­dos,” Cae­sar said.

Agri­cul­ture is at the “core of the Vin­cent­ian iden­ti­ty”, the min­is­ter of fi­nance of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Camil­lo Gon­salves stat­ed in this year’s bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Feb­ru­ary 1.

Gon­salves said the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic re­in­forced the im­por­tance of agri­cul­ture to the St Vin­cent and the Grenadines econ­o­my.

“Last year, the agri­cul­ture sec­tor was an im­por­tant rea­son that the Vin­cent­ian econ­o­my did not con­tract in the same man­ner as some of our neigh­bours. Even in the face of a dev­as­tat­ing drought and dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced ex­port mar­kets brought about by re­gion­al lock­downs, agri­cul­ture proved to be a main­stay in sus­tain­ing em­ploy­ment and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty” he said.

St Vin­cent and Grenadines’ agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion with­stood two body blows last year.

First­ly, the coun­try suf­fered its worst drought con­di­tions in 72 years, with some months ex­pe­ri­enc­ing 80 per cent re­duc­tions in rain­fall.

Sec­ond­ly, the pan­dem­ic-in­duced col­lapse in tourism re­duced ho­tels’ and restau­rants’ need for food, while lock­downs and bor­der re­stric­tions in cru­cial re­gion­al mar­kets lim­it­ed mar­ket ac­cess.

Da­ta gath­ered over the first three quar­ters of 2020 in­di­cate that crop yields de­creased by 14.4 per cent rel­a­tive to 2019 pro­duc­tion.

De­clines were ex­pe­ri­enced in ma­jor crops such as dasheen (-14 per cent), ed­doe (-10 per cent), sweet pota­to (-8 per cent), yam (-11 per cent), plan­tain (- 11 per cent) and ba­nana (-46 per cent).

The few in­stances of in­creased pro­duc­tion were con­cen­trat­ed among per­ma­nent crops like av­o­ca­do (16 per cent), bread­fruit (4 per cent), co­coa (4 per cent), co­conut (14 per cent) and man­go (9 per cent), which are the fruits of hardier trees.

De­spite the dif­fi­cul­ties caused by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines could have count­ed on T&T, Cae­sar said.

“Even though we have had the im­pact of COVID-19 we were al­ways able to ship to Trinidad with the as­sis­tance of the Min­is­ter Ramb­harat where we put in place the pro­gramme where our work­ers would not come off the ves­sel and our traf­fick­ers would not come down to Trinidad but they would send down the goods off load it, so COVID-19 they were able to ba­si­cal­ly be 98 per cent in terms of our trade with Trinidad was main­tained,” Cae­sar said.

Be­fore COVID-19 St Vin­cent and the Grenadines made a week­ly ship­ment to T&T, but now it is done fort­night­ly.

In Ju­ly 2017 a EC$20,000 a week trade agree­ment has been signed to ex­port pro­duce from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines to T&T as part of the grow­ing OECS Agri-Ex­port Ini­tia­tive.

Cae­sar said Ras­sar­co and Ex­port Co-op­er­a­tive in the small rur­al Vil­lage of Greiggs con­clud­ed the sale and pur­chase agree­ment with Bun­ny im­ports and ex­ports in T&T.

Greiggs is lo­cat­ed in the green zone.

Cae­sar said with this third blow caused by the vol­canic ac­tiv­i­ty the im­pact on agri­cul­ture and fish­eries has been “cat­a­stroph­ic” and that now the coun­try would have to restart its food pro­duc­tion sec­tors.

An as­sess­ment is sched­uled to take place lat­er this week to en­sure that Mon­day’s ship­ment can be com­plet­ed, Cae­sar said.

“How­ev­er all of this is said in the con­text that the erup­tion is on­go­ing, so this is a pre­lim­i­nary con­ver­sa­tion,” he said.

“Next Mon­day is the next sched­uled ship­ment which gives the peo­ple a bit more time to ag­gre­gate the stuff but it is de­pen­dent on Moth­er Na­ture and how she re­acts,” Cae­sar said.