The Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety T&T (ASTT) wish­es that in the up­com­ing bud­get, it would be treat­ed fair­ly and be giv­en fi­nan­cial re­leas­es prompt­ly to help farm­ers.
In the bud­get for fis­cal 2023, which was pre­sent­ed on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, by the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert, the agri­cul­ture sec­tor was al­lo­cat­ed the sec­ond low­est sub­ven­tion of $1.330 bil­lion. That was an in­crease from the $1.249 bil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for fis­cal 2022.
In an in­ter­view with Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day, ASTT pres­i­dent Daryl Ram­per­sad said more col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture Lands and Fish­eries is need­ed, but he claims that de­spite many at­tempts to work along­side the min­istry it has proven fu­tile thus far.
“The ASTT con­tin­ues to be treat­ed as a bas­tard child with al­most no re­leas­es, no ap­provals, even the trans­porta­tion of the or­gan­i­sa­tion was ground­ed on the ad­vice of the min­is­ter. How are we to pro­mote Agri­cul­ture if we can­not even unite to work in har­mo­ny for the sake of our farm­ers. There should be no pol­i­tics in agri­cul­ture,” Ram­per­sad lament­ed.
He said many ma­jor is­sues con­tin­ue to plague the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor along with pre­di­al lar­ce­ny where farm­ers are fear­ful for their lives in both crop and live­stock farm­ing.
Ram­per­sad said that joint ef­forts with the po­lice will en­cour­age more cov­er­age in farm­ing ar­eas.

“Al­so the penal­ties for pre­di­al lar­ce­ny need to be in­creased to de­ter in­di­vid­u­als from be­ing in­volved in these ac­tiv­i­ties. Many plant­i­ng projects have been ne­glect­ed for years in in­fra­struc­tur­al care....Or­ange Grove and Jern­ing­ham just to name a few. While the ef­fort placed on drainage in res­i­den­tial ar­eas is com­mend­able, food pro­duc­tion is equal­ly as im­por­tant as hous­ing. We have farm­ers who are self-em­ployed in­di­vid­u­als that con­tin­ue to ab­sorb loss­es dai­ly,” Ram­per­sad ex­plained.
In terms of ac­cess fund­ing for farm­ers, Ram­per­sad said agri­cul­tur­al fund­ing re­mains a strug­gle as many farm­ers do not meet the nec­es­sary cri­te­ria to ac­cess loans. Some food pro­duc­ers al­so do not meet the cri­te­ria to at­tain a farm­ers’ badge to ac­cess the agri­cul­tur­al in­cen­tive pro­gramme.
Ram­per­sad al­so point­ed out that Im­bert spoke of the $300 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion last year as well and no such in­cen­tives were forth­com­ing.

Broil­er grow­ers

Ex­press­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, was Broil­er Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Sudesh Ramkissoon, who said the Gov­ern­ment needs to en­sure that the Min­istry’s in­cen­tive pro­gramme is up­dat­ed and fig­ure out ways for farm­ers to get their re­bates faster or even im­me­di­ate­ly.
Ramkissoon al­so said the Gov­ern­ment should bring poul­try pro­duc­ers and farm­ers to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble and me­di­ate a healthy dis­course for im­prove­ment in re­mu­ner­a­tions.
“The gov­ern­ment can al­low for ex­pan­sion of the lo­cal live­stock mar­ket through in­cen­tive pro­grammes and then in­crease the tar­iffs on for­eign meat to al­low for lo­cal farm­ers to meet the mar­ket needs over some time,” he out­lined.
Asked whether chick­en prices were still $17 per pound Ramkissoon said no it is now be­tween $14 and $15 per pound as the mar­ket has bal­anced it­self.
He said that chick­en prices can be low­er if the gov­ern­ment can cre­ate a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship with the poul­try pro­duc­ers to as­sist in keep­ing the price of raw ma­te­ri­als down such as grain, feed ad­di­tives, and corn.
Speak­ing on tech­nol­o­gy for the sec­tor, the head said the cur­rent is­sue with the tech­nol­o­gy up­grades is that the in­dus­try still needs to be mech­a­nized.
“I mean that poul­try farm­ers need to mech­a­nize their wa­ter­ing and feed­ing sys­tems to en­sure a re­duc­tion in labour and an in­crease in ef­fi­cien­cy. The dif­fi­cul­ty that farm­ers face is that the cur­rent con­tract sys­tem is not as prof­itable as it used to be.
“In ad­di­tion, the cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy be­ing used is a tun­nel-ven­ti­lat­ed chick­en pen which al­lows birds to grow in a short­er pe­ri­od, re­sult­ing in a bet­ter feed-to-weight ra­tio, a low­er mor­tal­i­ty rate, and high­er prof­its. The is­sue is the cost of a tun­nel-ven­ti­lat­ed chick­en pen is about $2 mil­lion and with the cur­rent con­tract sys­tem a farmer may nev­er be able to pay off a loan of that mag­ni­tude,” Ramkissoon ex­pressed.
A telling point he high­light­ed is that the poul­try sec­tor is not grow­ing, as peo­ple are not in­vest­ing in build­ing more poul­try farms.
“The cost to build a chick­en pen for 10,000 birds with equip­ment may cost you ap­prox­i­mate­ly $550,000. The in­dus­try is no longer at­trac­tive be­cause the cost to en­ter is high, the prof­it is low and the de­mand on the own­ers’ time is high. The in­dus­try must first re­gain its stature. A poul­try farmer was con­sid­ered a busi­ness­man in the ear­ly eight­ies and nineties. Now in the present time he or she is now an em­ploy­ee,” he men­tioned.
Ac­cord­ing to Ramkissoon, the first so­lu­tion is to get the in­te­gra­tors to re­vise their con­tracts to make it more prof­itable for farm­ers, due to the cost of equip­ment and in­fra­struc­ture be­ing so high.

He rec­om­mend­ed that the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture should im­ple­ment a fast-track pro­gramme for poul­try farm­ers ex­pand­ing and mech­a­nis­ing their farms.
“The min­istry should al­so cre­ate a team with farm­ers and in­te­gra­tors im­me­di­ate­ly to reach some con­sen­sus on con­tract re­vi­sion. al­so in­creas­ing the in­cen­tives for farm­ers from the ex­ist­ing rates to re­flect true cost and al­so im­ple­ment­ing a 100 per cent in­cen­tive for all live­stock farm­ers who are try­ing to in­crease ca­pac­i­ty for three years. The pop­u­la­tion can al­so as­sist by de­mand­ing more lo­cal chick­en and meat to as­sist all live­stock farm­ers,” he added.

For­mer Agri Min­is­ter

For­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said Gov­ern­ment needs to fo­cus on get­ting more farm­ers in­volved in pro­duc­ing more food and there­fore the in­cen­tive pro­grammes must be more fo­cused, tar­get­ed, and ef­fi­cient­ly dis­bursed, so that many farm­ers would not have to wait years for re­im­burse­ments on cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture.
He not­ed that the most press­ing is­sues in the sec­tor have re­mained the same for the last 50 years, such as the lack of prop­er in­fra­struc­ture, in terms of ac­cess roads, to al­low farm­ers ac­cess to their lands to plant, har­vest and re­trieve crops.
Bharath said the in­abil­i­ty of farm­ers to ac­cess fi­nanc­ing, as a di­rect re­sult of leas­es not be­ing re­newed on a time­ly ba­sis, some­times for as long as 20 years, con­tin­ues to be a prob­lem, while in­put costs have es­ca­lat­ed over the years and farm­ers have had no re­lief from the Gov­ern­ment in mit­i­gat­ing these costs. And he said as a re­sult, lo­cal farm­ers are of­ten un­able to com­pete with im­port­ed fruits and veg­eta­bles com­ing in from coun­tries where farm­ers are sub­sidised.
Con­cern­ing tech­nol­o­gy, the for­mer min­is­ter said the gov­ern­ment has not led the de­bate nor en­cour­aged the use of tech­nol­o­gy in agri­cul­ture which would in­vari­ably in­crease yields, at least 3-fold as well as en­cour­age young peo­ple to get in­volved.
“If on­ly a few of the above is­sues are ad­dressed and the cor­rect em­pha­sis and fo­cus placed on these crit­i­cal is­sues, the food im­port bill will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced. Agri­cul­ture needs to be seen for what it is, crit­i­cal for our so­ci­ety. As such, the sec­tor needs to be hand­held, much in the same way we did with Point Lisas 50 years ago, un­til it can stand on its own. We have all the in­gre­di­ents to feed our­selves, land, wa­ter, weath­er, and com­mit­ted farm­ers,” Bharath out­lined.
On the is­sue of flood­ing, Bharath re­vealed that it can eas­i­ly be avoid­ed by en­sur­ing that all wa­ter­ways are reg­u­lar­ly cleaned and al­so by cre­at­ing re­ten­tion ponds across the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties.
He said in 2011/12 the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, un­der his stew­ard­ship, dug 350 re­ten­tion ponds that not on­ly served to pre­vent flood­ing but al­so to pre­serve wa­ter for the dry sea­son.
He added that prae­di­al lar­ce­ny can be dra­mat­i­cal­ly re­duced by al­low­ing farm­ers a small home­stead on their lands.
Pro­vid­ing elec­tric­i­ty to al­low rur­al ar­eas to be lit. Ded­i­cat­ed Com­mu­ni­ty Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny squads and pa­trols in­clud­ing What­sApp chat groups with farm­ers. Prae­di­al lar­ce­ny must be seen as a se­ri­ous crime and the nec­es­sary em­pha­sis be paid to its elim­i­na­tion,” Bharath an­nounced.