SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

As Trinidad and To­ba­go’s an­nu­al food im­port bill hov­ers around $7 bil­lion, three once-promis­ing youth agri­cul­tur­al pro­grammes lie aban­doned, leav­ing near­ly 1,500 grad­u­ates fac­ing un­cer­tain­ty and dashed hopes.

In­tro­duced un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion, the Youth in Agri­cul­ture Home­stead Pro­gramme (YAHP), the Agri­cul­tur­al Shade House Project (ASHP) and the Youth Aqua­cul­ture Project (YAP) were de­signed to at­tract young peo­ple in­to agri­cul­ture, cre­ate em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and help re­duce the coun­try’s de­pen­dence on im­port­ed food.

How­ev­er, af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) won the April 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, all three pro­grammes were dis­con­tin­ued, dis­plac­ing hun­dreds of par­tic­i­pants.

In June 2025, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the YAHP in Chatham, ac­cus­ing the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion of mis­lead­ing par­tic­i­pants with promis­es of land, homes and fi­nan­cial sup­port that nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

The pro­gramme promised each par­tic­i­pant a starter home, a two-acre agri­cul­tur­al plot and a $20,000 grant. Rati­ram said none of those com­mit­ments had been ful­filled, de­spite funds be­ing al­lo­cat­ed. He main­tained that the in­ten­tion was not to scrap the ini­tia­tive but to as­sess and re­struc­ture it in­to a mean­ing­ful pro­gramme.

Four­teen months lat­er, how­ev­er, the projects re­main idle, with in­fra­struc­ture de­te­ri­o­rat­ing and par­tic­i­pants still await­ing an­swers.

In Chatham, van­dals have stripped fix­tures and fit­tings from nine of the 11 starter homes con­struct­ed along Beach Road at a cost of more than $2 mil­lion. While ap­prox­i­mate­ly 176 homes were ear­marked for con­struc­tion, on­ly 11 were built be­fore the PNM left of­fice.

Each home cost $242,571 and formed part of a home­stead pro­gramme cham­pi­oned by then Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Fos­ter Cum­mings. Sim­i­lar de­vel­op­ments were planned for La Glo­ria Es­tate, Carlisle Es­tate, Tal­paro and To­co.

To­day, on­ly two of the homes are oc­cu­pied.

Dense veg­e­ta­tion now en­gulfs some of the struc­tures, mak­ing them dif­fi­cult to ac­cess. One house has been al­most com­plete­ly over­tak­en by vines and over­growth.

Bro­ken promis­es

Home­stead grad­u­ate Dar­ryl Jones, whose name has been changed, lives in one of the oc­cu­pied units and says the van­dal­ism has be­come a ma­jor safe­ty con­cern.

“It’s a huge safe­ty risk be­cause I’m the on­ly per­son liv­ing and farm­ing on the land. There’s a lot of prae­di­al lar­ce­ny. All the hous­es in the area have been van­dalised. At two o’clock in the morn­ing, you would see peo­ple dri­ving down the street steal­ing things from the hous­es.”

Ac­cord­ing to Jones, thieves have re­moved win­dows, doors, light switch­es, door han­dles, plumb­ing fix­tures, toi­let bowls, sinks, wiring and elec­tri­cal pan­el box­es. Even T&TEC’s over­head pow­er lines sup­ply­ing elec­tric­i­ty to the homes were re­port­ed­ly cut and stolen.

He said po­lice were re­cent­ly called af­ter two strangers il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­pied some of the homes. One of the oc­cu­pants, he claimed, was a con­vict­ed rapist.

Jones said eight of the 11 hous­es were com­plet­ed and con­nect­ed to wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty, while three re­mained un­fin­ished. He was as­signed one of the in­com­plete struc­tures.

“What I got wasn’t a starter house. It was a shed,” he said. “It was a big open space with no bed­rooms. We were told the con­trac­tor spent ex­tra mon­ey go­ing deep­er in­to the foun­da­tion to make the build­ing earth­quake-proof, so they couldn’t com­plete the hous­es with bed­rooms.”

The ex­pe­ri­ence has left him deeply frus­trat­ed.

“I feel screwed over. We were all screwed over,” Jones said.

“I feel at this point, hon­est­ly, we were set up to fail.”

He said many par­tic­i­pants left sta­ble jobs to join the pro­gramme, be­liev­ing it would pro­vide hous­ing and cre­ate path­ways to es­tab­lish agri­cul­tur­al busi­ness­es.

“We were con­stant­ly guar­an­teed elec­tions would not ham­per it. Every­thing would move smooth­ly. We were told not to fear. Then, the day af­ter the elec­tion, every­thing was shut down,” said the 30-year-old agri­cul­tur­al en­tre­pre­neur.

“Some par­tic­i­pants are now un­em­ployed. Last Christ­mas, ham­pers had to be dis­trib­uted to some who were strug­gling. Peo­ple were put in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion. Their lives have been turned up­side down.”

Jones said he spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $40,000 com­plet­ing his home and cov­ered the costs of wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty con­nec­tions. He al­so paid $8,000 to clear his two-acre par­cel, which was over­grown with dense veg­e­ta­tion.

In 2024, he re­ceived a five-year li­cence to oc­cu­py the land and now wor­ries that he could lose ac­cess when it ex­pires in 2029.

“What guar­an­tees do I have? We are hear­ing ru­mours that peo­ple want the land.”

While grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty, Jones be­lieves the homes were built in an un­suit­able lo­ca­tion.

“The hous­es were con­struct­ed at the back of the land in an area that’s dif­fi­cult to ac­cess. They were built be­hind God’s back. If a fe­male grad­u­ate had to live and work here, it wouldn’t be safe. If you don’t have a ve­hi­cle, get­ting here is very dif­fi­cult.”

De­spite the chal­lenges, Jones has turned his farm in­to a suc­cess sto­ry. Every three months he pro­duces about 86,000 pounds of cu­cum­bers while al­so cul­ti­vat­ing toma­toes and oth­er short-term crops. His op­er­a­tion em­ploys 15 peo­ple from the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

He said his suc­cess has some­times made him a tar­get of crit­i­cism from fel­low grad­u­ates.

“Af­ter I start­ed farm­ing, peo­ple be­came up­set with me. I had peo­ple call­ing me a house n****r and say­ing I was lick­ing Fos­ter’s boots. They want­ed to know how I was get­ting through while they weren’t.”

Jones de­nied any po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion and said he earned sev­er­al awards un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion sole­ly through hard work and per­se­ver­ance.

“So now that I am mak­ing progress, I am pub­lic en­e­my num­ber one.”

On Fri­day, the Sun­day Guardian sent Rati­ram a list of ques­tions via What­sApp seek­ing in­for­ma­tion on the aban­doned projects, ex­pen­di­ture on the pro­grammes and the sta­tus of the YAHP in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Up to press time, he had not re­spond­ed.

Pro­fes­sor warns food se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns grow­ing

For­mer dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Pro­fes­sor Wayne Gan­pat, said the coun­try’s food im­port bill in­creased by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent be­tween 2020 and 2024.

He cit­ed ris­ing im­ports of rice, ce­re­als, meats, cheese, pota­toes, cook­ing oil, fruits, veg­eta­bles, sug­ar and corn used in an­i­mal feed.

Dur­ing the same pe­ri­od, he said do­mes­tic agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion de­clined across sev­er­al sec­tors, with veg­etable pro­duc­tion alone falling by 37 per cent.

Gan­pat said farm­ers con­tin­ue to face long­stand­ing chal­lenges, in­clud­ing flood­ing, drought, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, ris­ing fer­tilis­er and chem­i­cal costs, labour short­ages and de­lays in ob­tain­ing agri­cul­tur­al leas­es.

Those is­sues, he said, have sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

With Trinidad and To­ba­go heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on im­port­ed food, Gan­pat warned the coun­try re­mains vul­ner­a­ble to glob­al price fluc­tu­a­tions, for­eign ex­change pres­sures and sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions.

“Hon­est­ly, I have not seen any­thing that has giv­en me hope that we are in­creas­ing do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion,” he said.

“We have not seen any ex­ten­sive ex­pan­sion in crop pro­duc­tion. The ques­tion is, what are we do­ing to re­duce the rise in food im­ports each year?”

Gan­pat not­ed that both the World Food Or­gan­i­sa­tion and In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund have fore­cast food price in­creas­es of about 15 per cent due to fu­el-re­lat­ed is­sues aris­ing from con­flicts in the Mid­dle East.

“They are go­ing to rise and stay el­e­vat­ed. The Gov­ern­ment has to act as an en­abler. It needs the right poli­cies and sup­port sys­tems to help farm­ers pro­duce more.”

Con­sumers, he warned, should pre­pare for high­er food prices.

He added that con­tin­u­ing hos­til­i­ties be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine could push fer­tilis­er costs even high­er.

Gan­pat al­so point­ed to the grow­ing health bur­den caused by im­port­ed processed foods, say­ing they con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases and place ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on pub­lic health­care spend­ing.

Gov­ern­ment, he said, must al­so ed­u­cate con­sumers about health­i­er nu­tri­tion­al choic­es.

“In that way, peo­ple could choose bet­ter, and we can re­duce the food im­port bill.”

He ar­gued that ris­ing glob­al food prices have im­pli­ca­tions far be­yond su­per­mar­ket shelves.

“There are im­pli­ca­tions for Gov­ern­ment. One ma­jor im­pli­ca­tion is that in the 2027 bud­get, Mr Tan­coo will have to al­lo­cate sig­nif­i­cant re­sources for so­cial safe­ty nets and price sup­port for vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens.”

Gan­pat said the de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue youth agri­cul­tur­al pro­grammes ap­peared poor­ly thought out.

“When you shut some­thing down, you’re sup­posed to come with some­thing new, a bet­ter plan. When you don’t have a plan, you end up re­act­ing to prob­lems in­stead of solv­ing them.”

He added: “No­body can see what the agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment plan is for this coun­try. I shud­der to think that we are sim­ply drift­ing along while the food im­port bill con­tin­ues to climb be­cause of ex­ter­nal fac­tors.”

How­ev­er, Gan­pat said he would have pre­ferred young peo­ple to be trained in val­ue-added agri­cul­tur­al in­dus­tries and ex­port mar­kets rather than crop pro­duc­tion alone.

“That is where the mon­ey is.”

85 per cent of T&T’s food is im­port­ed

Be­tween 2003 and 2016, T&T spent about $56.9 bil­lion on food im­ports, av­er­ag­ing $3.85 bil­lion a year.

By 2019, the food im­port bill jumped to $5.7 bil­lion and stayed steady for about three years.

In 2022, the bill sky­rock­et­ed to $7.3 bil­lion - the high­est it has ever been.

The fol­low­ing year, it dropped to $7.2 bil­lion.

T&T’s pri­ma­ry sup­pli­ers of goods are the Unit­ed States, Chi­na, In­dia and Cana­da.

Chick­en com­pa­nies have topped the list of for­eign ex­change users over the last five years. These in­clude Nu­trim­ix Feeds Ltd and Arawak Com­pa­ny Ltd.

For fis­cal 2026, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture was al­lo­cat­ed a $1.13 bil­lion bud­get to strength­en food se­cu­ri­ty, sup­port farm­ers and fish­eries and dri­ve sus­tain­able growth across the sec­tor.

In 2019, the coun­try spent over $2 bil­lion on im­port­ed ce­re­als, fruits, and veg­eta­bles, which cre­at­ed a se­ri­ous drain on valu­able for­eign ex­change.

For that year, T&T spent $180 mil­lion on bis­cuits, bread and pas­tries and $28 mil­lion on mix­es and doughs.

Be­tween 2018 and 2020, the gov­ern­ment al­so spent $234 mil­lion on im­port­ing lux­u­ry food items such as smoked salmon, lob­ster, grapes, pears, ap­ples, straw­ber­ries, peach­es and oth­er fruits.

This av­er­aged $78 mil­lion a year.

T&T im­port­ed $32.7 bil­lion in food-main­ly fruits, veg­eta­bles, ce­re­als, dairy and meats be­tween 2011 and 2016.

The coun­try al­so spent $669 mil­lion on al­co­hol im­ports in 2016, which was re­vealed by then agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat.

In the UNC’s 2025 man­i­festo, it stat­ed that over 85 per cent of our food is im­port­ed, cost­ing over $6 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

The man­i­festo as­sured that agri­cul­ture will no longer be the for­got­ten sec­tor and will be­come the cor­ner­stone of our eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, job cre­ation and food sov­er­eign­ty strat­e­gy.

The UNC al­so promised to re­duce the food im­port bill by $2 bil­lion, tar­get­ing ten strate­gic pil­lars hinged on feed­ing peo­ple, gen­er­at­ing for­eign ex­change and in­creas­ing agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports.

Among the pil­lars iden­ti­fied are un­lock­ing land for agri­cul­tur­al growth, boost­ing farmer se­cu­ri­ty and in­cen­tives, com­bat­ing agri­cul­tur­al crime, re­viv­ing strate­gic agri­cul­tur­al in­dus­tries, strength­en­ing in­fra­struc­ture and wa­ter man­age­ment and re­solv­ing his­toric in­jus­tices.

Pre­sent­ing the 2026 bud­get last Oc­to­ber, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo stat­ed that agri­cul­ture con­tributed less than one per cent of GDP, a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty we must re­verse.

Tan­coo said Gov­ern­ment will align with Cari­com’s “25 by 2025” ini­tia­tive to re­duce food im­ports by at least 25 per cent by 2030, while pro­mot­ing agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports.

“$793.7 mil­lion will be in­vest­ed in in­fra­struc­ture, ir­ri­ga­tion, fish­eries, land de­vel­op­ment and agri-tech ini­tia­tives,” Tan­coo stat­ed.

In March, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Rati­ram al­so promised to re­duce the re­liance on im­port­ed food by launch­ing a pi­lot project to pro­duce corn, soya bean and black-eyed peas in Ca­roni.

Corn is a pri­ma­ry en­er­gy com­po­nent in live­stock feed, while soya sits at the cen­tre of the food and live­stock val­ue chain with out­put for both hu­man con­sump­tion and an­i­mal feed.

Cum­mings: Pro­grammes were valid in­vest­ment

For­mer youth de­vel­op­ment and na­tion­al ser­vice min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings has crit­i­cised the clo­sure of three agri­cul­tur­al pro­grammes in­tro­duced un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, say­ing the ini­tia­tives would have ben­e­fit­ed 1,500 young peo­ple trained and cer­ti­fied by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

The pro­grammes, launched be­tween 2022 and 2024, pro­vid­ed par­tic­i­pants with stipends, train­ing and op­por­tu­ni­ties in agri­cul­ture.

Among them was the Youth Agri­cul­tur­al Home­stead Pro­gramme (YAHP), which of­fered two-year agribusi­ness cours­es for peo­ple aged 18 to 35. Par­tic­i­pants re­ceived a dai­ly sub­sis­tence al­lowance of $112.50.

Cum­mings said a 400-acre site in Chatham had been ear­marked for de­vel­op­ment through the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA), with more than 20 starter homes un­der con­struc­tion be­fore work stopped when the PNM left of­fice in April.

He said the pro­gramme was ex­pect­ed to in­tro­duce 1,000 new farm­ers in­to the sec­tor.

“It is very un­for­tu­nate the Gov­ern­ment has dis­con­tin­ued that pro­gramme be­cause it would have boost­ed food pro­duc­tion, re­duced the food im­port bill, strength­ened food se­cu­ri­ty and cre­at­ed em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for young farm­ers,” he said.

The min­istry al­so launched the Agri­cul­tur­al Shade House Pro­gramme (ASHP) in Tuck­er Val­ley, Ch­aguara­mas. Mod­elled on an ini­tia­tive in Guyana, the co­op­er­a­tive project was ex­pect­ed to in­clude 20 shade hous­es. On­ly four were com­plet­ed, while con­struc­tion had start­ed on the re­main­ing 16.

Cum­mings said 300 par­tic­i­pants were to be trained in shade-house pro­duc­tion, but the project ceased op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing the change in gov­ern­ment.

“The Gov­ern­ment stopped that pro­gramme, and the place is just in ru­ins right now,” he said, adding that he had heard ru­mours the lands could be re­as­signed to pri­vate in­ter­ests.

The third ini­tia­tive, the Youth Aqua­cul­ture Pro­gramme (YAP) in Cou­va, trained ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 par­tic­i­pants in the cul­ti­va­tion of fish, lob­ster and fresh­wa­ter shrimp. Cum­mings said it too was dis­con­tin­ued.

He urged the Gov­ern­ment to restart and com­plete the pro­grammes, par­tic­u­lar­ly for par­tic­i­pants who had al­ready in­vest­ed time and ef­fort.

De­fend­ing the ex­pen­di­ture on train­ing, stipends, grants, starter homes, shade hous­es and aqua­cul­ture fa­cil­i­ties, Cum­mings de­scribed it as “a valid in­vest­ment in young peo­ple.”

He could not say how much was spent on the pro­grammes. How­ev­er, he told Guardian Me­dia last Sep­tem­ber that 175 young farm­ers were ex­pect­ed to re­ceive two-acre plots in Chatham val­ued at more than $500,000 each, while the LSA planned to con­struct 176 starter homes val­ued at $242,571 apiece.