The Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ASTT) is call­ing on the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture to step in and save farm­ers from leav­ing their crops to rot be­cause of a pre­cip­i­tous drop in prices for lo­cal pro­duce.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed veg­etable farmer Dilip Chanka’s gar­den in Mal­oney on Wednes­day we were met with an en­tire field of toma­toes un­picked and with­er­ing away.

“This whole field con­demned,” Chanka said wav­ing a dis­mis­sive arm to­wards the land. “We plant this in No­vem­ber, it’s now March, so that’s 5 months of work for free.”

Right now, a pound of im­port­ed toma­toes is be­ing sold at 17 dol­lars at some re­tail out­lets. How­ev­er, a pound of lo­cal­ly pro­duced toma­toes is be­ing sold for around 4 dol­lars. In some cas­es, at a whole­sale lev­el that price could be as low as 1 dol­lar.

At those prices, Chanka said it’s best to leave the toma­toes alone.

“You can­not af­ford to pick to mar­ket, when you have to sort and box and then go to mar­ket, it not mak­ing any sense.”

But Chanka who has been in this busi­ness for the past 38 years, said he is still los­ing thou­sands of dol­lars af­ter his in­vest­ment.

“It is very dis­cour­ag­ing, and then they’re con­stant­ly rais­ing the cost of chem­i­cals be­cause they say it has a FOREX short­age, but that is the prob­lem right there, they’re us­ing the for­eign ex­change to buy things we are grow­ing here, they spend­ing it in the wrong place.”

It’s a prob­lem that has the at­ten­tion of the ASTT.

“Our farm­ers don’t have any way of be­ing told what to plant and when to plant, mean­ing that most of the farm­ers are pro­duc­ing the same com­mod­i­ty at the same time.”

ASTT Pres­i­dent Daryl Ram­per­sad said farm­ers are forced to drop their prices on cer­tain crops such as toma­toes, cab­bages and sweet pep­pers be­cause un­like their im­port­ed coun­ter­parts, those lo­cal­ly grown pro­duce do not have a con­tract­ed mar­ket to sell it to.

“Right now, cab­bage is be­ing sold at 2 dol­lars a pound and im­port­ed cab­bage is be­ing sold at 15 dol­lars, we are still shar­ing our items with the for­eign mar­ket. You see the for­eign pro­duce has a fixed mar­ket such as the gro­ceries and there­fore they can have a fixed price.”

The ASTT Pres­i­dent said lo­cal poul­try farm­ers have that sys­tem and it works well for them.

In ad­di­tion to call­ing for a prop­er pro­cure­ment di­vi­sion to al­lo­cate fixed mar­kets for lo­cal­ly grown pro­duce, it wants the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NAMDE­V­CO) to col­lect da­ta in or­der to cre­ate a crop fore­cast­ing sys­tem for farm­ers. This Ram­per­sad said will en­sure that farm­ers know what to plant and when.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat who said this year’s agri­cul­ture pro­duc­tion has been high­er than usu­al due to un­sea­son­al rain so that’s why prices are low­er than years gone by.

He said mar­kets for lo­cal pro­duce are be­ing start­ed with the veg­gie box pro­gramme by NAMDE­V­CO for the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and with Sub­way which he be­lieves will ab­sorb some of the ex­cess sup­ply.

Ramb­harat added that NAMDE­V­CO is al­so work­ing to get more farm­ers on­to its data­base so it can ad­vise on mar­ket fore­cast­ing and pro­duc­tion plan­ning.