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Thursday, May 8, 2025

Agri stakeholders want holistic plan from new govt

by

RAPHAEL JOHN LALL
21 days ago
20250416

Raphael John-Lall

Rais­ing food pro­duc­tion and low­er­ing the food im­port bill must be one of the main goals of the next gov­ern­ment, ad­vis­es agribusi­ness con­sul­tant Riyadh Mo­hammed.

With the gen­er­al elec­tion on April 28, Mo­hammed shared his wish list on shap­ing T&T's agri­cul­ture sec­tor with the Busi­ness Guardian.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in his bud­get state­ment in 2024 re­vealed that the coun­try's food im­port bill was a stag­ger­ing $7.2 bil­lion.

Mo­hammed em­pha­sised the next ad­min­is­tra­tion that gets in­to pow­er must use tech­nol­o­gy to at­tain the goal of in­creased food pro­duc­tion and self-suf­fi­cien­cy.

“They must fo­cus on in­creas­ing crop yields through im­proved soil and wa­ter man­age­ment, cre­at­ing high-yield drought-re­sis­tant crops, and cut­ting down on food waste if we are to boost food pro­duc­tion in a sus­tain­able way. Crop ro­ta­tion, cov­er crops, and no-till farm­ing are among the tech­niques that help pre­serve mois­ture, lessen ero­sion, and en­hance soil health. Use tech­nol­o­gy such as rain­wa­ter gath­er­ing and drip ir­ri­ga­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­gions that are prone to drought. Pri­ori­tise in­creas­ing soil fer­til­i­ty by pre­vent­ing soil degra­da­tion, adding or­gan­ic mat­ter, and us­ing fer­tilis­er ap­pro­pri­ate­ly,” he ex­plained.

Mo­hammed added that to in­crease meat, milk and egg pro­duc­tion, the coun­try’s next lead­ers must fo­cus on the fac­tors of live­stock pro­duc­tion: nu­tri­tion and feed­ing, breed­ing and re­pro­duc­tion, hous­ing and en­vi­ron­ment, health and dis­ease man­age­ment, so­cioe­co­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tions and un­der­stand­ing an­i­mal be­hav­iour and wel­fare.

“En­hance live­stock ac­cess to feed and wa­ter, breed­ing meth­ods, and pas­ture man­age­ment. To max­imise crop yields, strate­gi­cal­ly ap­ply fer­til­iz­ers, but con­sid­er the ef­fects on the ecosys­tem. Cre­ate im­proved for­age types that are more cli­mate change tol­er­ant, dis­ease re­sis­tant, and yield more,” he added.

He al­so said the next gov­ern­ment needs to low­er post-har­vest loss­es and should make in­vest­ments in im­proved pro­cess­ing tech­nol­o­gy and stor­age fa­cil­i­ties.

“Re­duce food loss and spoilage by stream­lin­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion and trans­porta­tion sys­tems. To cut down on do­mes­tic waste, ed­u­cate cus­tomers on how to han­dle and store food prop­er­ly. En­cour­age ver­ti­cal farm­ing and ur­ban farm­ing to boost food pro­duc­tion in cities. Use agri­cul­tur­al tech­niques that im­prove car­bon se­ques­tra­tion and low­er green­house gas emis­sions," Mo­hammed fur­ther ad­vised.

He is al­so hop­ing that the next gov­ern­ment would de­vel­op poli­cies that would strength­en agri­cul­ture’s role in the econ­o­my but stressed this must be done in an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able way.

“His­tor­i­cal­ly, past gov­ern­ments have in­ter­vened in agri­cul­ture more than oth­er pro­duc­tive sec­tors of the econ­o­my. Gov­ern­ments have done this to en­sure that their cit­i­zens have ac­cess to a suf­fi­cient and af­ford­able quan­ti­ty of food as well as a fair amount of com­pen­sa­tion for farm­ers.

"While these ob­jec­tives re­main im­por­tant, the up­com­ing gov­ern­ment should broad­en the scope of their poli­cies to achieve oth­er goals, like en­cour­ag­ing more in­no­v­a­tive and com­pet­i­tive in­dus­tries and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion sys­tems that are more re­silient to threats like cli­mate change,” he stat­ed.

Some mea­sures, Mo­hammed not­ed, are more ef­fec­tive than oth­ers in achiev­ing spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy goals.

“For ex­am­ple, pub­lic in­vest­ment in agri­cul­tur­al in­no­va­tion and in­spec­tion ser­vices is a proven way to boost sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty growth. To ac­com­plish pol­i­cy ob­jec­tives like im­proved en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance on farms, pay­ments to farm­ers may be con­di­tion­al­ly grant­ed, tar­get­ed at spe­cif­ic farms or re­gions, or both.

"Main­tain­ing ar­ti­fi­cial­ly high do­mes­tic prices (above in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els, for ex­am­ple, by en­forc­ing im­port bans) al­lows gov­ern­ments to as­sist farm­ers with­out di­rect­ly charg­ing the pub­lic cof­fers. These sub­si­dies, how­ev­er, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly im­pact the poor­est peo­ple and are paid for by con­sumers,” Mo­hammed said.

Busi­ness Friend­ly En­vi­ron­ment

Pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­ture So­ci­ety of T&T (ASTT), Dar­ryl Ram­per­sad fur­ther sug­gest­ed that the next gov­ern­ment ought to cre­ate a busi­ness-friend­ly en­vi­ron­ment for farm­ers.

“We are ask­ing for im­proved ease of do­ing busi­ness for the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty. We sent a pe­ti­tion ask­ing for all farm­ers in pro­duc­tion to be able to ac­cess the agri­cul­ture pro­gramme as it is now you must have land tenure­ship to ac­cess the pro­gramme.

"We have a large pop­u­la­tion of farm­ers that can­not ac­cess that due to the cri­te­ria and if we want to ex­pand agri­cul­ture, we should cater to all those farm­ers that are in pro­duc­tion. Al­so, why is it tak­ing 10 to 15 years to ac­cess a lease for agri­cul­tur­al farm­ing? If we are se­ri­ous about food pro­duc­tion, we need to start ad­dress­ing these is­sues,” he stressed.

An­oth­er sore is­sue that needs to be tack­led is fi­nanc­ing.

“The Agri­cul­ture De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB) takes months to process one loan for a farmer. Yes, we have seen farm­ers ac­cess­ing the $100,000 grant but what about those that do not fit the cri­te­ria to get that. We al­so met Re­pub­lic Bank last Oc­to­ber and they al­so said they would make fi­nanc­ing avail­able for the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty and we have been send­ing names and we are now in April and no farmer from that list has qual­i­fied for fi­nanc­ing. I be­lieve it is for up to $250,000 and they want to fi­nance farm­ers who are in­to pro­duc­tion and not just those who own their land.

“Farm­ers are sole traders and farm­ers take mon­ey from their pock­ets to deal with the ef­fects of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and in­to the agri­cul­ture sec­tor and if there is no fi­nanc­ing then the farm­ers will suf­fer a loss. The ques­tion is what the farmer will do in that three- to four-month time span and how will they sur­vive? Again, it is about the ease of do­ing busi­ness for the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty,” Ram­per­sad ex­plained.

Mak­ing it clear that ASTT is not af­fil­i­at­ed with any po­lit­i­cal par­ty Ram­per­sad called on whichev­er par­ty form­ing the next gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op an ef­fi­cient roadmap for agri­cul­ture.

“We need a prop­er plan. We need to car­ry out a cen­sus in the agri­cul­ture com­mu­ni­ty and then we can de­vel­op a roadmap for the sec­tor. There must al­so be train­ing for farm­ers and the in­tro­duc­tion of new tech­nolo­gies for farm­ers like green­house farm­ing, ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems and all these sys­tems,” he said.

He al­so com­plained that he has not heard the po­lit­i­cal par­ties speak­ing about agri­cul­ture for the elec­tion cam­paign so far, say­ing this is­sue seems to be on the “back­burn­er.”

“They are talk­ing about prop­er­ty tax, health­care, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty which are all im­por­tant but food pro­duc­tion is equal­ly as im­por­tant. We need to eat as a coun­try,” he added.

He lament­ed that the ASTT is not get­ting mon­ey on time for its projects be­cause of bu­reau­cra­cy.

Ram­per­sad ex­plained that every fis­cal year, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture al­lo­cates a 'bare min­i­mum' of $1.8 mil­lion to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, half of which cov­ers on­ly salaries.

“Project fund­ing for the or­gan­i­sa­tion has been very, very min­i­mal. We have made cer­tain re­quest for plans. Right now, we are in the dry sea­son and project fund­ing that deals with is­sues like cli­mate change like mak­ing wa­ter avail­able and farm­ing, we do not have suf­fi­cient fund­ing. The Gi­ant African Snail pest erad­i­ca­tion pro­gramme which our or­gan­i­sa­tion car­ries out has been on hold for al­most a year. There are al­so pro­grammes like safe­ty train­ing we should be car­ry­ing out. We have on hold the school pro­grammes. We would do projects in schools to in­tro­duce agri­cul­ture to schools and we have not been re­ceiv­ing suf­fi­cient funds. There has been a drop in what we can de­liv­er to the farm­ers based up­on what was avail­able to us,” Ram­per­sad added.

At the same time, he not­ed he has been work­ing close­ly with the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Kaz­im Ho­sein who has been "very co-op­er­a­tive"' in sign­ing off and ap­prov­ing funds how­ev­er state bu­reau­cra­cy tends to slow down the trans­fer of funds.

“Every­thing has to go to the Min­istry of Fi­nance for ap­proval and then goes back to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture. So, I would not bash the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture from that point. How­ev­er, when it goes to the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the re­lease as well, we are talk­ing about months and months af­ter they ap­proved the funds. This is rather dis­ap­point­ing,” he added.


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