The pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Farm­ers’ Union, Shi­raz Khan, is call­ing for ur­gent face-to-face dis­cus­sions with the Gov­ern­ment and Nestlé over the com­pa­ny’s planned ex­it from the lo­cal milk col­lec­tion in­dus­try, say­ing dairy farm­ers are still be­ing kept in the dark about the rea­sons be­hind the move.

Khan’s com­ments come days af­ter the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) re­vealed that Nestlé’s sale process has en­tered its next phase, with an in­ter­na­tion­al firm in Switzer­land over­see­ing the trans­ac­tion. The union al­so said the process is ex­pect­ed to take be­tween six and nine months while the com­pa­ny’s as­sets are as­sessed be­fore prospec­tive buy­ers are in­vit­ed.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Khan crit­i­cised last week’s pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the is­sue, de­scrib­ing it as po­lit­i­cal “spin­ning” rather than a gen­uine ef­fort to ad­dress the con­cerns of dairy farm­ers.

He said the con­sul­ta­tion, con­vened by a min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee, failed to pro­vide mean­ing­ful di­a­logue on the fu­ture of the dairy in­dus­try.

Khan claimed for­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath raised sev­er­al im­por­tant ques­tions dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tion, in­clud­ing why Nestlé in­tends to stop col­lect­ing milk in Trinidad and To­ba­go while con­tin­u­ing sim­i­lar op­er­a­tions in more than 40 coun­tries around the world.

“Why is it that Nestlé wants to leave Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter be­ing here since 1962?” Khan asked.

He ques­tioned whether fac­tors such as in­creased nat­ur­al gas prices or oth­er op­er­a­tional chal­lenges had in­flu­enced the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion, say­ing these is­sues had nev­er been prop­er­ly ad­dressed.

Khan al­so chal­lenged the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain what ef­forts were be­ing made to en­cour­age Nestlé to re­main in Trinidad and To­ba­go, ar­gu­ing that dis­cus­sions should fo­cus on strength­en­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the com­pa­ny and lo­cal dairy farm­ers in­stead of re­ly­ing more heav­i­ly on im­port­ed milk.

He said lo­cal milk pro­duc­tion had fall­en dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the years, from about 14 mil­lion litres an­nu­al­ly to around one mil­lion litres, and called for poli­cies to re­verse the de­cline.

Among the mea­sures he pro­posed were grant­i­ng long-await­ed agri­cul­tur­al leas­es to dairy farm­ers, al­low­ing them to ac­cess fi­nanc­ing to ex­pand and mod­ernise their op­er­a­tions.

Khan said farm­ers had in­vest­ed mil­lions of dol­lars in­to milk pro­duc­tion over sev­er­al decades and de­served a mean­ing­ful role in dis­cus­sions about the sec­tor’s fu­ture.

He al­so cor­rect­ed re­ports that Nestlé’s planned ex­it had been ex­tend­ed by 12 months.

Khan said the ex­ten­sion is for six months, mov­ing the com­pa­ny’s planned de­par­ture from De­cem­ber this year to June 2027.

He main­tained that mean­ing­ful ne­go­ti­a­tions in­volv­ing the Gov­ern­ment, Nestlé and dairy farm­ers re­main the best chance of pre­serv­ing the lo­cal milk in­dus­try be­fore the com­pa­ny’s ex­it is fi­nalised.