Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at UWI St Au­gus­tine, Pro­fes­sor Mark Wud­di­vi­ra, is call­ing on Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram to ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue agri­cul­tur­al tourism as a vi­able eco­nom­ic dri­ver for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­ing dur­ing a sem­i­nar on cli­mate-re­silient food sys­tems, Pro­fes­sor Wud­di­vi­ra said agri-tourism can be at the fore­front of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion if sup­port­ed through col­lab­o­ra­tion among UWI, Gov­ern­ment, and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners like South Africa.

“This presents a very unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to us as a coun­try and al­so as a re­gion to re­al­ly strength­en what we are do­ing in our agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor,” Wud­di­vi­ra said.

Say­ing T&T has the po­ten­tial to de­vel­op its agri-tourism sec­tor, Wud­di­vera said: “We can have agri­cul­tur­al parks where we can ac­tu­al­ly put all these com­modi­ties in the field, where peo­ple will come and see how they pro­duce in­dige­nous crop va­ri­eties, even live­stock, wildlife... That can be­come a thriv­ing sec­tor in our na­tion. It has the ca­pac­i­ty of sus­tain­ing our na­tion.”

He said this would al­so boost the tourism sec­tor.

“Every­thing is about food tourism. Any­thing that you are do­ing — food con­cept. So fo­cus­ing on those food prod­ucts that we have that ad­van­tage, it’s im­por­tant.”

Wud­di­vi­ra said the coun­try must start with its lo­cal, niche crops.

“Our lo­cal in­dige­nous foods, which are the things that we can re­al­ly cap­i­talise on... we need to fo­cus on those niche prod­ucts, lo­cal prod­ucts that we can de­vel­op, in­dige­nous prod­ucts that we have com­par­a­tive ad­van­tage on... which will al­so en­cour­age and strength­en our tourism.”

He praised Min­is­ter Rati­ram’s re­cent re­marks about in­creas­ing agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports, but warned that train­ing and re­search must come first.

“Ca­pac­i­ty build­ing be­comes very im­por­tant. Most times, agri­cul­ture is al­ways at the fore­front when you have any dis­as­ter — ei­ther hy­dro­cli­mat­ic or nat­ur­al dis­as­ter. The first im­pact that you see, it’s on agri­cul­ture.”

He said sus­tain­abil­i­ty, not just farm­ing, must be the goal. “We can­not just re­duce agri­cul­ture to just some­body out there as a farmer... Peo­ple can plant some­thing, raise a chick­en or a bird and so on, but is it sus­tain­able? Is it re­silient? Is the sys­tem that you’re us­ing re­sis­tant to cli­mate and things like that?”

High­light­ing the uni­ver­si­ty’s role, Wud­di­vi­ra said, “Trinidad and To­ba­go is par­tic­u­lar­ly for­tu­nate be­cause we have the on­ly Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture in the whole re­gion. We al­so have a fac­ul­ty that has spe­cialised for more than a hun­dred years in trop­i­cal agri­cul­ture. So we have the ca­pac­i­ty there, we have the know-how.”

He said the Fac­ul­ty is ready to sup­port na­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts. “If we ap­ply the right sci­ence, the right tech­nol­o­gy, the right in­no­va­tion — we have un­lim­it­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties to get to the lev­el where we can be proud of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.”

On cli­mate re­silience, he said food se­cu­ri­ty de­pends on tech­nol­o­gy and plan­ning.

“Root crops are very vi­tal be­cause of their abil­i­ty to with­stand cli­mat­ic im­pacts. I’m talk­ing about pota­to, dasheen, yam... We could build green­hous­es and grow a lot of food in small spaces.”

He said stan­dards must be up­held in any agri-tourism strat­e­gy. Ul­ti­mate­ly, he said the mod­el must be re­gion­al, not iso­lat­ed. “We need to in­te­grate agri-tourism with the broad­er tourism strat­e­gy,” he said. “Not just as a niche prod­uct.”

Pro­fes­sor Wud­di­vi­ra spe­cialis­es in Agri-En­vi­ron­men­tal Soil Physics and is an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised ex­pert in soil phys­i­cal man­age­ment and sus­tain­able use of hu­mid trop­i­cal ecosys­tems. His re­search has led to nu­mer­ous pub­li­ca­tions in in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nals and pre­sen­ta­tions world­wide, ac­cord­ing to the UWI.

Last week, Min­is­ter Rati­ram said he planned to in­crease agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports by $1 bil­lion and re­duce T&T’s food im­port bill by $2 bil­lion over the next few years.