Trinidad and To­ba­go’s agri­cul­tur­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion dri­ve has tak­en a ma­jor step for­ward with the suc­cess­ful har­vest of black eye beans un­der the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries’ pi­lot pro­gramme.

The ini­tia­tive, which al­so in­cludes corn and soya beans, is de­signed to test the com­mer­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty and scal­a­bil­i­ty of strate­gic crops in lo­cal con­di­tions.

The har­vest cer­e­mo­ny brought to­geth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, farm­ers, tech­ni­cal agen­cies and de­vel­op­ment part­ners, un­der­scor­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tive na­ture of the project.

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries, Ravi Rati­ram, de­scribed the achieve­ment as a “crit­i­cal step to­ward build­ing greater re­silience with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s food pro­duc­tion sys­tems.”

Min­is­ter Rati­ram em­pha­sized that black eye beans are a high-po­ten­tial crop due to strong do­mes­tic de­mand, nu­tri­tion­al val­ue and their role in sus­tain­able farm­ing prac­tices such as ni­tro­gen fix­a­tion.

The pi­lot project is part of a broad­er na­tion­al strat­e­gy to re­duce im­port de­pen­den­cy and strength­en food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty. It will con­tin­ue to un­der­go tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion to as­sess ef­fi­cien­cy, mar­ket fea­si­bil­i­ty and op­por­tu­ni­ties for ex­pan­sion in­to larg­er-scale com­mer­cial cul­ti­va­tion.

A basket of shelled black eye beans grown and harvested under a food security pilot project spearheaded by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.

MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES

Min­is­ter Rati­ram com­mend­ed pi­o­neer­ing farm­ers Richard Singh and Nawaz Karim for their ded­i­ca­tion and ex­per­tise in ad­vanc­ing the ini­tia­tive.

Oth­er speak­ers at the event in­clud­ed Rishad Seecher­an, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ca­roni East; An­nalean In­niss, Act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries; Keshore Lautch­man, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion; Kam­la Pha­goo, Coun­cil­lor for Kel­ly Vil­lage/War­renville; and Fayaz Shah, Man­ag­er of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and In­no­va­tion at the Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (CAR­DI).

The project was ex­e­cut­ed in part­ner­ship with CAR­DI, the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA), and the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion (FAO). The Min­istry reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing sus­tain­able, pro­duc­tion-dri­ven agri­cul­ture that sup­ports eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, rur­al de­vel­op­ment and na­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty.