Shas­tri Boodan

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat says agri­cul­ture in schools will be giv­en a boost.The min­is­ter made the state­ment dur­ing a walk on Sat­ur­day host­ed by the Ca­roni arm of the Na­tion­al 4-H coun­cil of T&T.

Ramb­harat said the re­turn of the Prime Min­is­ter's Award for Agri­cul­ture would see a re­turn to agri­cul­tur­al ex­hi­bi­tions where prizes would be giv­en to farms, farm­ers and schools.He said he was some­what dis­ap­point­ed to see schools re­mov­ing their gar­dens to make way for in­fra­struc­ture as car parks.

The min­is­ter said his min­istry would be us­ing per­son­nel from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion as part of its sup­port net­work to en­sure that the agri­cul­tur­al com­po­nent of the school's cur­ricu­lum is ful­filled.Ramb­harat said a school's gar­den com­pe­ti­tion would be an­nounced be­fore the end of this year. He said this would be done in part­ner­ship with the Food and Agri­cul­tur­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion (FAO) and the 4H club.

Ch­agua­nas May­or Gopaul Bood­han com­mend­ed the group and its ef­fort to sen­si­tise the work of young peo­ple through the ve­hi­cle of holis­tic de­vel­op­ment.The youths marched from the Mon­trose Junc­tion and head­ed to Saith Park, Ch­agua­nas.