Still reel­ing from the dev­as­tat­ing flood dam­age caused by Trop­i­cal Storm Karen on Sep­tem­ber 22, Aranguez farm­ers are a re­silient lot. Like oth­er farm­ers across the coun­try, they keep com­ing back year af­ter year for more pun­ish­ment. Like punch-drunk box­ers af­ter get­ting pum­melled with the left hook from flood­ing, they are forced to sober up and face is­sues with land tenure­ship, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, gov­ern­ment bu­reau­cra­cy and im­ports.

T&T's food im­port bill for 2018 was $5.65 bil­lion (TT). In the 2020 Bud­get, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Lands and Fish­eries was al­lo­cat­ed $708 mil­lion, a pit­tance com­pared to Ed­u­ca­tion ($7.5B), Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ($6.4B), and Health, ($6.8B) that re­ceived big­ger slices of the fis­cal pie.

Gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to move more than 80,000 land files in­to an elec­tron­ic doc­u­ment man­age­ment sys­tem and will launch a land card to give state land users card ac­cess to their files.

Farm­ers and cyn­ics ask where did the min­istry get that 80,000 fig­ure from, if there were that amount of farm­ers, they could more than meet the coun­try's agri­cul­tur­al needs and there wouldn't be such a stag­ger­ing bil­lion-dol­lar im­port bill.

Crit­ics said the Gov­ern­ment was send­ing mixed sig­nals on agri­cul­ture; on one hand, it claims to want to en­cour­age the growth and de­vel­op­ment of agri­cul­ture, but it has killed the sug­ar in­dus­try, the lo­cal rice in­dus­try is on the brink of col­lapse, lo­cal live­stock farm­ers can­not com­pete with meat im­ports, and fer­tile, agri­cul­tur­al lands are be­ing ear­marked for ur­ban de­vel­op­ment.

Sec­re­tary of the Aranguez Unit­ed Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Barath Ram­per­sad said "Most of the small farm­ers in Aranguez are ten­ants, they don't have tenure, leas­es or ti­tle to the land they cul­ti­vate. They rent from the landown­ers which makes it dif­fi­cult for them to re­ceive any form of com­pen­sa­tion."

He said if the Gov­ern­ment wants to en­sure food se­cu­ri­ty, land tenure­ship should be one of the crit­i­cal as­pects to be ad­dressed so farm­ers can use their ti­tle to the land in or­der to ac­cess loans which will, in turn, en­able them to in­crease their pro­duc­tion and al­so in­crease the num­ber of peo­ple they can hire be­cause busi­ness will be grow­ing.

Aranguez was the food bas­ket of the na­tion, now with ur­ban­i­sa­tion, the land was be­ing sold out for hous­ing de­vel­op­ment, Ram­per­sad said.

Many peo­ple still de­pend on agri­cul­ture, how­ev­er, their liveli­hood is at stake.

"An­oth­er is­sue is WASA claim­ing all the wa­ter is theirs in the dry sea­son and want to charge them for us­ing the wa­ter, which is stress­ing out farm­ers."

He sug­gest­ed re­lo­cat­ing farm­ers to state lands, give each farmer two-to-five-acre plots, reg­is­ter them and give them leas­es so they can con­tin­ue their trade.

Ram­per­sad said mega­farms were coun­ter­pro­duc­tive, a small farmer could cul­ti­vate five acres of land and be more prof­itable than a 100-acre mega­farm be­cause he will man­age it more eco­nom­i­cal­ly with­out wast­ing tax­pay­ers' mon­ey un­less there was a hid­den agen­da to put small farm­ers out of busi­ness or crip­ple the in­dus­try

He said if mega­farms were to pro­duce crops that were im­port­ed such as pota­toes, onions and gar­lic, they might be fea­si­ble.

Ram­per­said said farm­ers in Aranguez, as well as the rest of the coun­try, can pro­duce what most busi­ness­men im­port­ed if they were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty, but the en­abling en­vi­ron­ment and in­cen­tives were not there.

Afraid to re­plant in Aranguez

Pres­i­dent of the Aranguez Unit­ed Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Saty­anand Ma­haraj said there was a lack of po­lit­i­cal will to do the every­day things ex­pect­ed of a gov­ern­ment.

He said Aranguez had not ex­pe­ri­enced this kind of flood­ing since 1989 when the NAR was in gov­ern­ment and the coun­try didn't have mon­ey to do any kind of dredg­ing works.

Ma­haraj said he wrote Works Min­ster Ro­han Sinanan sev­er­al times this year to have the wa­ter­course cleared.

He said con­trac­tors were be­ing disin­gen­u­ous or the min­istry lacked over­sight, the work was su­per­fi­cial, on­ly re­mov­ing veg­e­ta­tion from the riv­er bank and not dredg­ing the riv­er, it took al­most three weeks to get re­con­struc­tive work done.

Ma­haraj said a land de­vel­op­er in Ab­dool Ghany Ex­ten­sion in Aranguez had cut ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 feet of the riv­er bank and re­moved an eight-foot-high por­tion of dirt to fill a pri­vate prop­er­ty, claimed he was build­ing a wall and caus­ed the flood­wa­ters when Trop­i­cal Storm Karen struck to in­un­date the sur­round­ing farm­ers' fields.

He said on the day of the flood­ing all the de­vel­op­er said was that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley would pay for the dam­age. When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area, a new wall of dirt had gone up where the flood­wa­ters had breached the riv­er pre­vi­ous­ly.

He said ad­ja­cent Mt Lam­bert al­so ex­pe­ri­enced flood­ing, MP for St Joseph Ter­rence Deyals­ingh was seen hos­ing down the roads in the com­mu­ni­ty but had not yet come to Aranguez to meet res­i­dents and farm­ers.

Ma­haraj said it was iron­ic that the MTS Plaza in Aranguez that hous­es the head­quar­ters for the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion was al­so flood­ed dur­ing Trop­i­cal Storm Karen.

He said there was a dis­par­i­ty in the re­sponse times af­ter flood­ing in­ci­dents by re­lief agen­cies in cer­tain ar­eas, when there is a flood on the west­ern penin­su­la, the next day ex­ca­va­tors are dis­patched to clean up de­bris while it took the same min­istry three weeks to reach Aranguez.

Ma­haraj said fol­low­ing sub­se­quent heavy rain­fall, the riv­er bank was breached and re­flood­ed the farm­ers' fields.

He said the farm­ers lost mil­lions, they were afraid to re­plant, there was no spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion or dis­pen­sa­tion for crop com­pen­sa­tion and many of them were still wait­ing on com­pen­sa­tion for the floods in Oc­to­ber 2018 and will still be wait­ing for next year's flood dam­age.

Ma­haraj said de­spite ut­ter­ances by Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat that the farm­ers' cheques were ready, no one had re­ceived any.

He said most of the farm­ers' cul­ti­va­tion was done on cred­it; many rent­ed the land, took seeds, chem­i­cals and equip­ment on con­sign­ment, farm­ers fed the na­tion out of their own pock­ets even when their crops went down the drains in flood­wa­ters, they still had to pay their sup­pli­ers and banks.

Farm­ers' claims re­ject­ed

A farmer who did not want to be named said they were be­ing faced with myr­i­ad prob­lems in­clud­ing in­fra­struc­ture, drainage, de­plorable ac­cess roads, bridges and land tenure.

He said the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture was on­ly pay­ing reg­is­tered farm­ers, many of them, how­ev­er, were un­reg­is­tered and were still await­ing flood com­pen­sa­tion from the last year which was a na­tion­al dis­as­ter and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 per cent of farm­ers weren't com­pen­sat­ed through no fault of their own.

The man said be­cause there was no reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion from the min­istry, the farm­ers' claims were re­ject­ed, in some in­stances, their farm­ers' cards were ex­pired, they were not even aware of new poli­cies and in­cen­tives and re­ceived poor sup­port ser­vice from the min­istry.

He said there were con­tin­u­ing se­cu­ri­ty is­sues at mar­kets, in­ad­e­quate park­ing space for in the whole­sale mar­ket, and prae­di­al lar­ce­ny was ram­pant—both on pri­vate farms and gov­ern­ment farms.

The man said there were many new an­i­mal and fruit crop pests and dis­eases that have en­tered the coun­try in the last 15 years be­cause of flawed poli­cies and open bor­ders.

He said many state lands oc­cu­pied by farm­ers were gross­ly un­der­utilised be­cause of flawed poli­cies and there was no en­force­ment of the pol­i­cy.

He said peo­ple were al­so sell­ing state lands for ex­or­bi­tant sums of mon­ey for hous­ing.

The man said in the North East of the coun­try quar­ry­ing was tak­ing place on state lands al­lo­cat­ed for farm­ing and some farm­ers were be­ing chased off fear­ful for their lives in parts of Va­len­cia and Matu­ra.

BOX

Ramb­harat re­sponds

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat re­spond­ed to Guardian Me­dia's ques­tions on Wednes­day re­gard­ing the chal­lenges farm­ers faced in the coun­try.

He was asked what the min­istry was do­ing to help farm­ers with re­spect to poor in­fra­struc­ture, ac­cess roads, bridges and drainage and how does he plan to deal with the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of over 80,000 farm­ers on State lands?

Ramb­harat said these were is­sues around the coun­try, not Aranguez on­ly, the min­istry fo­cused its re­sources on those roads and bridges that im­pact­ed the high­est num­ber of farm­ers in ac­tive pro­duc­tion.

He said in some cas­es the min­istry worked with oth­er min­istries such as the Works and Trans­port and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment min­istries and with mu­nic­i­pal bod­ies.

Ramb­harat said he was not aware that there were 80,000 farm­ers to be reg­u­larised on state lands. He said the min­istry dealt with ap­pli­ca­tions and there was a sig­nif­i­cant back­log dat­ing back six decades. Ramb­harat said it was im­pos­si­ble to tell the fig­ure be­cause it was all pa­per-based in files across the coun­try and re­quired con­tin­u­ous work. He said the min­istry was mak­ing head­way, but not as fast as he would like it to be.

With the Prime Min­is­ter ad­vo­cat­ing eat­ing healthy and lo­cal food, Ramb­harat was asked what is the min­istry do­ing to pro­mote lo­cal food pro­duc­tion, he said eat­ing lo­cal was re­al­ly a well­ness propo­si­tion, im­prov­ing a per­son's chances for good health and well­ness means the less re­liant he will be on processed food and im­port­ed food.

He said the coun­try had enough lo­cal pro­duc­tion of ba­sic veg­eta­bles and most fruit and over­sup­ply will make farm­ing un­eco­nom­i­cal and kill fam­i­ly farm­ers.

On the amount of mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed to agri­cul­ture in the Bud­get, Ramb­harat said 72 per cent of the re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture was for salaries and wages, and that more mon­ey will not help un­til the mould of do­ing things the same way year af­ter year was bro­ken.

He said his fo­cus was on­ly land tenure and in­creas­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties for pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment.

Ramb­harat said he al­so fo­cused on iden­ti­fy­ing those as­sets which were bet­ter in the hands of pri­vate in­vestors/man­age­ment.