Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

T&T will see record-high prices of pro­duce in the lead-up to Christ­mas be­cause of the fre­quent flood­ing which has been af­fect­ing farm­ers, says Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety pres­i­dent Daryl Ram­per­sad.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing two days of floods which de­stroyed agri­cul­tur­al crops in Pe­nal, Bar­rack­pore and Wood­land, Ram­per­sad said be­fore the re­cent flood­ing there was al­ready a short­age of crops on the lo­cal mar­ket.

This led to pro­duce be­ing sold at ex­or­bi­tant prices, Ram­per­sad said.

How­ev­er, he ex­plained: “Based on ad­di­tion­al rain­fall that we re­ceived, the farm­ers were al­ready ab­sorb­ing a lot of loss­es. We al­ready bare­ly had enough pro­duce for sale lo­cal­ly, and now with this lat­est rain­fall from last week to now, it is safe to say that we can ex­pect very, very high prices for this Christ­mas sea­son here.”

Ram­per­sad said farm­ing had be­come te­dious for many be­cause of the ris­ing cost of pro­duc­tion.

“It is rather dif­fi­cult now be­cause we have to keep re­build­ing from point A to point B and as of re­cent­ly, the farm­ers have not been mak­ing a lot of prof­it be­cause of these is­sues,” he added.

Ram­per­sad said apart from the high cost of fer­til­iz­ers and chem­i­cals, cli­mate change is al­so a ma­jor is­sue for farm­ers.

“We now see the need to see to have agri­cul­ture in pro­tect­ed con­trolled agri­cul­tur­al sys­tems and build­ing above-ground pens as it per­tains to live­stock farm­ing,” he said.