BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt)

“Farm­ing looks mighty easy when your plow is a pen­cil, and you're a thou­sand miles from the corn­field.”—For­mer US pres­i­dent Dwight D Eisen­how­er

It's not just a few crops or a kitchen gar­den loss, but as ex­plained by sci­en­tists and agri­cul­tur­al ex­perts, flood­ing in key agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion ar­eas can lead to sweep­ing dam­age to crops and fenc­ing as well as loss of live­stock. Added to that, agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist, Omar­dath Ma­haraj said it is al­so the loss of farmer mo­ti­va­tion, work ef­fort, land prepa­ra­tion, and farm ar­chi­tec­ture, var­i­ous equip­ment and ma­chin­ery, seeds and germplasm and on-farm ex­per­i­ments as well as rur­al in­fra­struc­ture (ac­cess roads, bridges, wa­ter sources, and re­serves etc).

This re­al­i­ty of­ten leaves farm­ers in a 'mon­key pants' said rice farmer Richard Singh who has been sup­ply­ing the grain to Na­tion­al Flour Mills since 2012.

Singh is one of the many farm­ers whose farm­ing land was bad­ly de­stroyed by the re­cent cat­a­stroph­ic flood­ing, caused by tor­ren­tial rain­fall, which brought much dev­as­ta­tion to parts of east, south and cen­tral Trinidad.

One of the coun­try's largest rice farm­ers, Singh lost near 200 acres of food pro­duc­tion and near $3 mil­lion in har­vesters, trac­tors, and equip­ment caught in the flood­wa­ters.

He said since the floods let up on his farm­ing lands at El Car­men, Ca­roni, he has spent the last days search­ing in hope of find­ing equip­ment washed away in the floods.

He is pray­ing for the rains to stop, hav­ing bare­ly re­cov­ered from the last month's flood and even floods which oc­curred in 2017.

“Right now I con­fused. I don't know what to do. We re­ceived com­pen­sa­tion very late last year, so most farm­ers were forced to bor­row mon­ey to keep work up and then pay it back when we fi­nal­ly got the com­pen­sa­tion. So it comes like we end up with noth­ing. We just 'spin­ning top in mud,'” Singh says.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing these floods were by far the worst, Singh, who re­sides in Cunu­pia, lament­ed that year in and year out, farm­ers are met with this cri­sis when­ev­er floods oc­cur yet there con­tin­ues to be no plan by the "peo­ple in charge" to safe­guard agri­cul­ture and farm­ers in T&T.

"Gov­ern­ment come and gov­ern­ment go. I don't know for what rea­son there is no re­al com­pre­hen­sive plan in this coun­try for agri­cul­ture with the sup­port of the Prime Min­is­ter," he says.

The hus­band and fa­ther of three who be­came a farmer 30 years ago, first work­ing with his step­fa­ther, said as soon as his chil­dren "be­come of age" he will re­tire from farm­ing as it's just too hard and is prob­a­bly the most dis­re­spect­ed and dis­re­gard­ed pro­fes­sion around.

Singh: Tax­pay­ers, govts don't care

An emo­tion­al Singh ac­cused tax­pay­ers of not re­al­ly car­ing about the state of agri­cul­ture in T&T be­cause "they were get­ting food any­way".

Com­par­ing T&T to Venezuela, Singh says, “The on­ly time they will val­ue farm­ers in this coun­try is when they can­not get the food like Venezuela. The Gov­ern­ment there, like Trinidad, found it eas­i­er to im­port food and ne­glect­ed to pro­duce its own. Venezuela is rich in nat­ur­al re­sources and the peo­ple starv­ing."

He said the coun­try cur­rent­ly im­ports 33,000 tonnes of rice while lo­cal farm­ers are bare­ly pro­duc­ing a thou­sand tonnes. He be­lieves this pro­vides a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty for more rice farm­ing in the coun­try but said the Gov­ern­ment was just not tak­ing ad­van­tage of this and it was be­yond his com­pre­hen­sion.

"Farm­ers have been lob­by­ing for years, some have come and passed on and nev­er got the chance to see agri­cul­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go rise to its fullest po­ten­tial. How much talk again we go talk? The more we talk, is the more they im­port. There is no plan and they don't care," Singh said.

Ma­haraj agreed with these sen­ti­ments. He said af­ter sev­er­al years of fis­cal bud­get deficits and eco­nom­ic hard­ship, dam­age to the ma­jor food pro­duc­ing ar­eas from flood­ing, di­lap­i­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture, ten­an­cy and oth­er is­sues, it is a bur­den to main­tain T&T's de­pen­den­cy on food im­ports cou­pled with food price in­fla­tion and the ur­gent need to re­turn val­ue and op­por­tu­ni­ties to rur­al agri­cul­tur­al and fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

"On many fronts, food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty re­mains chal­lenged for many rea­sons. Some of which re­quires out-of-the-box think­ing, awak­en­ing to the new ur­gency of re­al­i­ty and an un­der­stand­ing that it can­not be busi­ness as usu­al in T&T, es­pe­cial­ly if we seek to pro­tect the

vul­ner­a­ble among us—the men and women who lit­er­al­ly feed the na­tion."

Sookoo: Ramb­harat's state­ment down­right dis­re­spect­ful

Pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T Dhano Sookoo has de­scribed as an "out­right dis­re­spect" Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat's re­sponse to the so­ci­ety's pro­pos­al put for­ward to the Agri­cul­ture De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB) for 'spe­cial pay­ment arrange­ments' to be put in place for farm­ers.

Last Tues­day at a me­dia brief­ing, Ramb­harat said the ADB al­ready makes pro­vi­sion to as­sist farm­ers in times of flood. Ac­cord­ing to Ramb­harat, weath­er-re­lat­ed fac­tors are tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion by the bank as this would ul­ti­mate­ly af­fect loan pay­ments. But in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Sookoo, she said Ramb­harat's state­ment was "most dis­re­spect­ful, dis­cour­te­ous, and in­sen­si­tive".

"I want the min­is­ter to iden­ti­fy what pro­grammes it has, that he is talk­ing about. The on­ly pro­gramme the ADB has, which is like any oth­er pro­gramme oth­er com­mer­cial banks have, is to re­fi­nance the loan"

Sookoo ar­gued that when farm­ers have to re­fi­nance their loans at a time like this it would on­ly con­tin­ue to keep them in debt.

She said fail­ure to as­sist farm­ers in this time of need would not on­ly be detri­men­tal to farm­ers but al­so the coun­try. She ex­plained the time it would take farm­ers to re­bound and get back in­to pro­duc­tion, most of them would have to take their sav­ings to con­tin­ue pay­ing loans and many of them have al­ready in­di­cat­ed they have no mon­ey to re­sume pro­duc­tion.

"A lot of farm­ers lost all their equip­ment and we have to al­so re­mem­ber many of these farm­ers lost their house­hold items as well. All we are ask­ing of the ADB is for a sim­i­lar pol­i­cy for ADB clients that was pro­vid­ed for HDC ten­ants, af­fect­ed by the floods, which was an­nounced by the Prime Min­is­ter."

On Oc­to­ber 26 at a post-Cab­i­net brief­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced two 'speedy' flood re­lief grants would be giv­en to HDC ten­ants af­fect­ed by the re­cent floods. One grant, the sum of $15,000 would be giv­en for a fam­i­ly with­out chil­dren who suf­fered se­vere dam­age from flood wa­ters en­ter­ing their liv­ing space. While a fam­i­ly with chil­dren would qual­i­fy for the $20,000 grant. Gov­ern­ment al­so an­nounced a three-month mo­ra­to­ri­um on mort­gage and rental pay­ments for HDC home­own­ers af­fect­ed by the floods.

Asked if there was any fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tion by the ADB on the pro­pos­al, Sookoo said no, and she be­lieves with Ramb­harat's state­ment, ab­solute­ly no con­sid­er­a­tion would be giv­en to the pro­pos­al.

Min­is­ter: Farm­ers ben­e­fit from bud­get al­lo­ca­tion called flood as­sis­tance

Un­like the "spe­cial" grant be­ing paid to flood vic­tims through The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat said on Fri­day that pro­vi­sion has al­ways been made for farm­ers through the al­lo­ca­tion in the bud­get called flood as­sis­tance.

"Last year the min­istry paid out $9.7 mil­lion dol­lars to 6,500 farm­ers. Farm­ers re­ceived from a few hun­dred dol­lars to over $150,000 in some cas­es, and that was to get them back on their feet," Ramb­harat said.

He said the al­lo­ca­tion was sim­i­lar to that of the grants re­cent­ly made avail­able to HDC ten­ants af­fect­ed by the floods, ex­cept there was no lim­it placed on this al­lo­ca­tion as was the case with the flood re­lief grants that HDC ten­ants are cur­rent­ly re­ceiv­ing. He said the al­lo­ca­tion was based on the type of crops un­der cul­ti­va­tion and the per­cent­age of lots.

"So for in­stance, if you have ochro, there is a fig­ure that is paid for ochro based on the cul­ti­va­tion un­der­tak­en and per­cent­age of the lot. So it all de­pends on what is plant­ed. A big farmer can get $40 mil­lion dol­lars where­as a small farmer will get a small­er amount," Ramb­harat ex­plained.

Re­fer­ring to the ap­pli­ca­tion process for the flood as­sis­tance al­lo­ca­tion, Ramb­harat said farm­ers were all aware of and fa­mil­iar with the process. He said once farm­ers put in their ap­pli­ca­tions the min­istry goes out and do its eval­u­a­tion, at which pay­ments are sub­se­quent­ly made.