Geisha Kow­lessar

Soar­ing prices of lo­cal pro­duce is the main tar­get as the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co) moves to es­tab­lish green­house farms through­out T&T by the end of this month.Robert Ram­samooj, Namde­v­co's chair­man, who was ap­point­ed last De­cem­ber, said farm­ers would no longer be dis­tressed by their crops with­er­ing in the dry sea­son, or be­ing com­plete­ly wiped out by floods in the rainy sea­son.

De­scrib­ing green­house farm­ing as the way for­ward, Ram­samooj said some 1,200 farm­ers had al­ready been trained and cer­ti­fied in green­house man­age­ment.These farms would be scat­tered through­out the coun­try, with em­pha­sis on flood-prone ar­eas where crops would be most vul­ner­a­ble, he ex­plained."Our tar­get is to train some 2,000 farm­ers in all as­pects of green­house farm­ing...We al­ready trained 1,200 farm­ers and we ex­pect the rest to com­plete their train­ing in the next six months," Ram­samooj said.

He said the farm­ers would save hun­dreds of dol­lars as they would no longer have to use pes­ti­cides and oth­er chem­i­cals to boost crop pro­duc­tion."We are mov­ing to cre­ate a health­i­er en­vi­ron­ment through the elim­i­na­tion of pes­ti­cides," he said."Con­sumers will al­so ben­e­fit be­cause the goods that they buy in the mar­ket and su­per­mar­kets will be much health­i­er, nat­u­ral­ly grown and free from chem­i­cals."

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­samooj, farm­ers in need of fi­nanc­ing to set up green­house farms could eas­i­ly ac­cess loans from the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB)."Those in need of lands could ob­tain leas­es from the EM­BD (Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny)," he said."We are mak­ing it easy in all as­pects for farm­ers to im­prove them­selves." Farm­ers will al­so have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sign two and three-year con­tracts to sup­ply Namde­v­co with pro­duce.

Plans to build three­new pack­ing hous­es

Plans are al­so on the draw­ing board to con­struct at least three pack­ing hous­es this year to store pro­duce, Ram­samooj said.He said there al­ready was a pack­ing house at Pi­ar­co, and Namde­v­co planned to build two oth­ers at Tabaquite and Pe­nal.

The third site is yet to be iden­ti­fied.

"The pack­ing hous­es will be used to reg­u­late food prices, so when there is a glut, goods will be stored...When cer­tain pro­duce are scarce they will be re­leased," Ram­samooj said."So the prices of goods will al­ways re­main rea­son­able... It will not be­come ex­pen­sive as we see some­times in the case of toma­toes."

He said there were plans to col­lab­o­rate with the can­ning in­dus­try for farm­ers to sup­ply goods to var­i­ous man­u­fac­tur­ers."Namde­v­co will buy the goods from farm­ers which, in turn, will be sup­plied to Na­tion­al Can­ners," he said. Urg­ing farm­ers to view them­selves as busi­ness­men rather than labour­ers, Ram­samooj de­scribed agri­cul­ture as a "sci­ence" con­duct­ed "above the earth." He em­pha­sised that the lo­cal mar­ket need­ed to be sat­is­fied be­cause T&T's food im­port bill was too ex­or­bi­tant.

Ex­press­ing con­cern that more peo­ple seemed to be mov­ing away from farm­ing, Ram­samooj said it should not be viewed as a me­nial task but one that had dig­ni­ty.He said pro­grammes such as Cepep ab­sorbed a great deal of labour, as it was a means of mak­ing mon­ey with­in a short­er pe­ri­od of time.

Fo­cus on in­fra­struc­turalde­vel­op­ment

With the on­set of the dry sea­son, pro­vi­sion must be made to clear clogged ir­ri­ga­tion wa­ter cours­es and de­vel­op ir­ri­ga­tion chan­nels to avoid mas­sive flood­ing when the rainy sea­son comes.This is the view of Nor­ris De­onar­ine, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Food Crop Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion.He said flood­ing, cou­pled with huge loss­es in crops, would al­ways oc­cur once in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment in agri­cul­tur­al ar­eas was not im­ple­ment­ed.

"Peren­ni­al flood­ing is al­ways a ma­jor fac­tor that con­tributes to high food prices and flood­ing has al­so af­fect­ed the vol­ume of pro­duce that is sup­posed to be on the lo­cal mar­ket," he said."Very lit­tle has been done to clear wa­ter cours­es... Sev­er­al ar­eas that were not flood-prone are so now be­cause of de­vel­op­ment of hous­ing and com­mer­cial prop­er­ties." He claimed some of the these struc­tures were built with­out prop­er as­sess­ment of en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact.

Urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to play a stronger role in de­vel­op­ing the coun­try's nat­ur­al ir­ri­ga­tion ar­eas, De­onar­ine said a prop­er wa­ter man­age­ment sys­tem was bad­ly lack­ing."We need a prop­er wa­ter man­age­ment sys­tem for the pro­tec­tion and de­vel­op­ment of catch­ment ar­eas for rain­fall," he said."We need to build small reser­voirs and ar­ti­fi­cial lakes which could be used for agri­cul­tur­al and com­mer­cial pur­pos­es."

He said while there was "enough space" for prime agri­cul­ture, its us­age was not max­imised."We need to har­monise some of the Gov­ern­ment agen­cies, es­pe­cial­ly those who have heavy equip­ment like bull­doz­ers and ex­ca­va­tors to cre­ate ef­fi­cient wa­ter­ways," De­onar­ine said."Now is the time to make an ob­jec­tive as­sess­ment of ar­eas heav­i­ly af­fect­ed by flood­ing."

Avoid food cri­sis

The day may come when T&T may not have enough food to feed it­self.That grim warn­ing comes from Ver­non Per­sad, pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, who said 81 per cent of the coun­try's food, in­clud­ing ba­sic com­modi­ties, was im­port­ed."To break that cy­cle of T&T im­port­ing al­most every­thing is go­ing to take a lot of ef­fort be­cause pro­duc­ing out of the coun­try is cheap­er... Oth­er coun­tries have that com­par­a­tive ad­van­tage," Per­sad said.

He said there was al­so a shift in the vol­ume of goods be­ing pro­duced which might ul­ti­mate­ly place the coun­try at a ma­jor dis­ad­van­tage.Say­ing there was a marked shift in the vol­ume of lo­cal goods, in­clud­ing food crops be­ing pro­duced, Per­sad said his as­so­ci­a­tion in­tend­ed to meet with Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion Vas­ant Bharath to en­cour­age peo­ple to grow their own food.