Shal­iza Has­sanali

The Na­tion­al Food­crop Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (NF­FA) is mov­ing to slash the stag­ger­ing $4-bil­lion food im­port bill by half, with­in the next 18 months. And the mem­bers are call­ing on the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion to al­low Cepep work­ers to play an in­te­gral role in help­ing T&T ob­tain food se­cu­ri­ty, af­ford­able food prices, and to pro­duce more lo­cal food. Ed­u­ca­tion and re­search of­fi­cer of the NF­FA, Nor­ris De­onar­ine, said they in­tend­ed to cut the in­creas­ing bill by en­cour­ag­ing its 19,000 reg­is­tered farm­ers to grow a va­ri­ety of foods and rear live­stock. De­onar­ine said they were al­so look­ing to woo ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11,000 ad­di­tion­al farm­ers, who aban­doned their lands back, in­to the sec­tor to ramp up food pro­duc­tion. Tonnes of sta­ples, peas and beans, veg­eta­bles, fruits, spices, meats and fruits juices are im­port­ed, tak­ing T&T's food im­port bill over the years to an as­tro­nom­i­cal fig­ure. Foods such as onions, gar­lic, car­rots, peas, beans, spices and even grapes, which T&T has been im­port­ing for decades to feed its 1.3 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion, De­onar­ine said, could be grown on state and pri­vate­ly- owned lands.

De­onar­ine said Gov­ern­ment's Tuck­er Val­ley Mega-Farm in Ch­aguara­mas, which has been pro­duc­ing poor yields and un­der-utilised Ca­roni 1975 Ltd lands were two lo­ca­tions be­ing con­sid­ered by its as­so­ci­a­tion to in­crease agri­cul­tur­al con­tri­bu­tion. The NF­FA is al­so look­ing to in­tro­duce corn, cas­sa­va and even bread­fruit flour on the mar­ket, which De­onar­ine in­sist­ed was far more healthy than white flour. In the past, De­onar­ine said Paramin farm­ers grew car­rots on a large scale, but its pro­duc­tion de­clined when gov­ern­ment start­ed im­port­ing the or­ange-coloured veg­etable. "There is no doubt it we can in­crease food pro­duc­tion and cut the food bill by half in the com­ing 18 months, once we have a prop­er ma­chin­ery in place," said De­onar­ine. "Once we have the right con­di­tions, a prop­er frame­work, the back­ing of the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry and em­pow­er the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty, we can achieve our goals."

What would al­so be need­ed for the farm­ers, De­onar­ine said, were in­cen­tives, land tenure, prop­er drainage, ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems, agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads, has­sle-free loans, sub­sidised ma­chin­ery, seeds, chem­i­cals and fer­tilis­ers. De­onar­ine said in or­der to re­duce the food im­port bill, the NF­FA would re­quire ad­e­quate labour­ers, which can be sourced from Cepep. De­onar­ine said one of the in­cen­tives the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to of­fer was a high­er pay pack­age to Cepep work­ers, once they got in­to the fields. "Right now, farm­ers pay labour­ers as much as $150 a day to work the land. This should be of­fered to them." De­onar­ine said with the de­cline in the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try, labour­ers over the years moved on to oth­er pur­suits. "This might al­so be an op­por­tu­ni­ty where Cepep work­ers can branch off in­to their own farms, af­ter ob­tain­ing prac­ti­cal train­ing. It might help them get out of the de­pen­den­cy syn­drome."

Dur­ing the com­ing weeks, De­onar­ine said the NF­FA would try and en­gage a meet­ing with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Chan­dresh Shar­ma, un­der whose min­istry Cepep falls. De­onar­ine said it was no hid­den se­cret that thou­sands of farm­ers aban­doned their pri­vate fields be­cause of bu­reau­cra­cy, frus­tra­tion and red tape, and the NF­FA was work­ing at all costs to bring them back in­to the lands. "We need all hands on deck; not on­ly the sea­soned farm­ers, but young peo­ple as well who will be able to con­tin­ue the trade." This, among oth­er is­sues, came up for dis­cus­sion dur­ing a re­treat yes­ter­day at Paria Suites, which Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath at­tend­ed. The re­treat is ex­pect­ed to wrap up to­day. Ad­mit­ting that for years the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try had been ne­glect­ed, De­onar­ine said the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to un­der­take sev­er­al projects for it to be­come vi­able, worth­while and fea­si­ble. "We need to get these things go­ing im­me­di­ate­ly. The chal­lenge is not for the farm­ers to grow the food. What we need is the nec­es­sary things put in place."