Joshua Seemu­n­gal

For hours from 8 am yes­ter­day, hun­dreds of peo­ple in with their ve­hi­cles, queued out­side of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture’s Head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas, wait­ing to col­lect plants and seedlings.

The ini­tia­tive, called Feed the Na­tion, was host­ed by the hunt­ing group, Hard Grounds Get Soft and in part­ner­ship with the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry, with an over­all aim of en­cour­ag­ing more home­grown food.

By the day’s end, ac­cord­ing to or­gan­is­ers, more than 51,000 plants were dis­trib­uted for free.

Bags that were giv­en out in­clud­ed, among oth­er things, let­tuce, cel­ery, pineap­ple, dasheen, pota­toes, sweet pota­toes, cas­sa­va and ba­nanas.

“We are in a cri­sis. We are in a sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try where peo­ple are los­ing their jobs, peo­ple can’t work right now be­cause of the pan­dem­ic. You can give some­body a ham­per, but it could on­ly feed them for a few days, but if you teach them about plant­i­ng and plants, you could help them feed their fam­i­ly and neigh­bours,” Ren Gopiesingh, the ini­tia­tive’s brain­child, said.

Ac­cord­ing to Gopiesingh, Hard Grounds Get Soft plans to con­tin­ue the ini­tia­tive, how­ev­er, he hoped to give out even more items next time.

He said the next event will like­ly be in To­ba­go.

Acting Minister of Agriculture Kazim Hosein distribute seedlings and food items to members of the public at the Hunters United Plant Distribution at the Ministry of Agriculture, Head Office, Chaguanas yesterday

ANISTO ALVES

Val­lance Ramb­harat, al­so part of the or­gan­is­ing group, en­cour­aged the pri­vate sec­tor to con­tact his hunt­ing group to get in­volved.

“This is our way of giv­ing back - mak­ing good use of the down­time when the hunt­ing sea­son is closed - we utilise our time fruit­ful­ly and this is our way of giv­ing back to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” Ramb­harat said.

Ray­mond John and Clarence Pe­ters were just two of hun­dreds of peo­ple to col­lect plants and seedlings.

They were both grate­ful for the ini­tia­tive, promis­ing to make good use of the items.

“It’s a bless­ing and I ap­pre­ci­ate it very much. It will go a long way. I plan to put them in box­es and grow them and eat from them and share them too with my neigh­bours. I’ve told a lot of folks about this you know,” John said.

“I think this is a good ini­tia­tive. It is very thought­ful for peo­ple to come to­geth­er, es­pe­cial­ly the Hunters As­so­ci­a­tion, to do a food dri­ve with seedlings, so that every­one can plant for them­selves and put food for their fam­i­lies to­geth­er,” Pe­ters added.

Out to help hand out bags was Min­is­ter in the Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Avinash Singh, as well as the Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Kaz­im Ho­sein.

Acting Minister of Agriculture, Kazim Hosein, right, and Minister in the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries, Avinash Singh, left, hand out plants and food items to members of the public, during the Hunters United Plant Distribution initiative Feed the Nation, at the Ministry of Agriculture Head Office, Chaguanas, yesterday.

ANISTO ALVES

Min­is­ter Ho­sein was al­so dou­bling up as Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter, with Min­is­ter Ramb­harat out of of­fice for a short pe­ri­od.

Min­is­ter Ho­sein was full of praise for Hard Grounds Get Soft for the project, say­ing it was a huge suc­cess.

“I am see­ing and meet­ing peo­ple from all over the coun­try - places like Mara­cas, some­body even said they came from Point Fortin,” he said.

Min­is­ter Singh added to the prais­es for the hunt­ing group, say­ing, “Mr Ren Gopiesingh and his team re­al­ly demon­strate good cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty at a time when the coun­try re­al­ly needs the ex­tra push. The econ­o­my, the en­vi­ron­ment, the pan­dem­ic—food is of ut­most im­por­tance.”