JESSE RAMDEO

With hun­dreds of fields of fresh pro­duce de­stroyed by flood­ing since the start of the rainy sea­son, farm­ers are sound­ing the alarm that food prices will con­tin­ue to rise. How­ev­er, they are al­so threat­en­ing to down their tool un­til the dry sea­son is ap­proach­ing, say­ing it makes no sense to con­tin­ue to suf­fer loss­es due to the loss­es be­ing brought about by flood dam­age.

Sill Farm­ers Sup­port Group pres­i­dent Bindra Ma­haraj told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that re­cent flood­ing in ar­eas across the coun­try had im­pact­ed a con­sid­er­able num­ber of his mem­ber­ship, who have now lost fields of crops.

“Peo­ple have tak­en a po­si­tion, the farm­ers that is, they have de­cid­ed not to plant any more for the bal­ance of the year be­cause of the loss­es, its se­ri­ous loss­es. Farm­ers are go­ing to be very adamant about it, they have said that if you go back and plant and the pro­jec­tion is for more rain un­til the end of the year, it just doesn’t make fi­nan­cial sense,” Ma­haraj said.

The farm­ers’ com­plaints about sub­stan­tial loss­es and the threat to stop plant­i­ng food comes ahead of an an­tic­i­pat­ed bumper Christ­mas har­vest.

Ma­haraj ex­plained that over 1,000 mem­bers across the coun­try have been left reel­ing from cli­mate change, poor in­fra­struc­ture and un­ap­proved hous­ing de­vel­op­ments.

He ex­plained that de­spite farm­ers’ at­tempts to pre­serve their crops, the wrath of Moth­er Na­ture was too much to bear.

“Most of the farm­ers I know went and bought Bio­forge to try and re­ju­ve­nate their plants and you know what, more rain came, more flood­ing came and that has gone through the win­dow. That is the ex­tent of dam­age we are talk­ing about, we are talk­ing about mil­lions of dol­lars,” he said.

He al­so cau­tioned that the ef­fects of the re­cent flood­ing will be far-reach­ing.

“I’m go­ing to be frank with you, apart from a short­age of food com­ing in­to Trinidad, if you speak to whole­salers, whole­salers are talk­ing about a short­age of goods to sell,” he said.

Ma­haraj not­ed that ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion is need­ed to en­sure farm­ers can con­tin­ue op­er­a­tions.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the loss­es farm­ers have in­curred in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the nec­es­sary as­sess­ments will be con­duct­ed to re­duce dis­rup­tions to the coun­try’s food sup­ply.

“That as­sis­tance will be made avail­able as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to en­sure the farm­ers will get back on their feet as is nec­es­sary to en­sure their out­put for the coun­try is avail­able,” Row­ley said.

The PM said the Gov­ern­ment want­ed to take every step in restart­ing agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion af­ter the rains and flood­ing.

“And we ex­pect those who haven’t been flood­ed won’t take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to price gouge as the short­age oc­curs in these sit­u­a­tions where some farm­ers have lost crops,” he said.

“We ex­pect the mar­ket will be rea­son­able and buy­ers will be­ware of what is hap­pen­ing in the mar­ket­place. But pro­duc­tion will be en­cour­aged, es­pe­cial­ly in the case of veg­eta­bles and so on.”

Row­ley said it will be de­ter­mined who’s in line to be as­sist­ed with flood com­pen­sa­tion and who le­git­i­mate­ly qual­i­fies for as­sis­tance and that as­sis­tance would be made avail­able as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.