RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As the Gov­ern­ment sets a goal to re­duce the $7.2 bil­lion food im­port bill by 25 per cent by 2025, the Pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­ture So­ci­ety, Dar­ryl Ram­per­sad, says this tar­get is not re­al­is­tic.

Re­spond­ing to the mea­sures an­nounced in the bud­get for agri­cul­ture, Ram­per­sad ex­plained that even with all the nec­es­sary in­cen­tives for farm­ers, achiev­ing this goal in just a few months is un­like­ly.

 “It will take at least a year to 18 months to see re­sults,” he said. Ram­per­sad stressed that the nec­es­sary sup­port must in­clude an agri­cul­tur­al in­cen­tive pro­gramme to boost pro­duc­tion.

“We need to lo­cal­ly in­crease our abil­i­ty to pro­duce items, in­clud­ing rice.

“Peo­ple used to eat lo­cal rice, but now they are con­sum­ing Jas­mine and Bas­mati, which we don’t pro­duce lo­cal­ly. It will take time, but with the Food Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee in place, a strate­gic plan can be de­vel­oped to boost pro­duc­tion,” he ex­plained.

Ram­per­sad added that cer­tain agri­cul­tur­al sec­tors, par­tic­u­lar­ly rice pro­duc­tion and an­i­mal hus­bandry, take time to yield re­sults.

“Rice can take six months to pro­duce, and an­i­mal hus­bandry could take up to 24 months. That’s why I would safe­ly project that we won’t achieve this goal un­til at least 2026.”

Ram­per­sad al­so called for in­cen­tives to be ex­tend­ed to all ac­tive farm­ers, ex­cept those farm­ing il­le­gal­ly in for­est re­serves. 

“We need to make sure the in­cen­tives reach those in ac­tive pro­duc­tion,” he said.

Mean­while, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Fish­eries Econ­o­mist, Sharon Hutchin­son, al­so ex­pressed con­cerns over the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to agri­cul­ture. 

She not­ed that the Agri­cul­ture Sec­tor re­ceived 2.0 per cent in the 2025 Bud­get, com­pared to 2.4 per cent in 2024. 

“While this may not seem like a big dif­fer­ence, this sec­tor is bud­get­ed to re­ceive $258 mil­lion dol­lars less than al­lo­cat­ed in the 2024 bud­get. This is wor­ry­ing be­cause it sug­gests that in­vest­ments in key up­grades and cap­i­tal projects are like­ly to be cur­tailed, giv­en that staffing costs ac­count for a size­able chunk of ex­pens­es,” she said.

How­ev­er, she wel­comed the Agri­cul­ture In­tern­ship Pro­gramme, say­ing it would pro­vide hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence for grad­u­ates, ben­e­fit­ing both the stu­dents and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.

“I would have liked to see more em­pha­sis on sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment from the point of in­vest­ing more re­sources in­to the de­vel­op­ment of re­new­able en­er­gy, even as we fur­ther de­vel­op our oil and gas sec­tor,” she said.

And while the bud­get in­clud­ed new so­lar en­er­gy projects, more sup­port for the use of elec­tric cars and the adop­tion of cli­mate-smart tech­nolo­gies, Hutchin­son said these in­vest­ments need to be scaled up with pri­vate sec­tor in­put.