Pe­ter Christo­pher

The threat and nui­sance of the Gi­ant African Snail (GAS) may now be a means to sup­ple­ment your in­come, as the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture plans to in­tro­duce a boun­ty sys­tem of­fer­ing a re­ward for the cap­ture and sub­mis­sion of the snails to a des­ig­nat­ed site.

As part of the project Sur­veil­lance and Con­trol of Per­ni­cious Pest and Dis­eases, a task force was re-es­tab­lished for the mon­i­tor­ing and sur­veil­lance of Per­ni­cious Pests and Dis­eases in­clu­sive of bat con­trol and GAS as well as the im­ple­men­ta­tion of mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures for Tu­ta Ab­so­lu­ta, Moru­ga Lo­cust, and Sweet Pota­to Wee­vil.

The min­istry told Guardian Me­dia that the task force has pro­posed a two-pronged ap­proach, which in the first in­stance will see a boun­ty sys­tem based on a mod­el utilised by Bar­ba­dos.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, it will be rolled out in Coun­ty St George West and Coun­try Ca­roni this month.

"As a pi­lot, the ini­tia­tive will or­gan­ise per­sons want­i­ng to cap­ture and sub­mit snails at a des­ig­nat­ed col­lec­tion site for a re­ward by the weight of snails col­lect­ed. It will in­volve the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the pub­lic and farm­ers.

"This strat­e­gy car­ries the po­ten­tial to cre­ate niche em­ploy­ment and sup­ple­men­tary in­come for key par­tic­i­pat­ing stake­hold­ers while achiev­ing the goal of pest con­trol.

"To this end, the min­istry is fi­nal­is­ing a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness strat­e­gy to en­gage and in­form the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty."

File: Farmer Madho Persad Oudho shows how the snails cleared down his pumpkin patch at Cunjal Foodcrop Project, Cumoto South Trace, Barrackpore, in November 2021.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

The sec­ond ap­proach, the min­istry said, will re­quire cor­po­rate par­tic­i­pa­tion in the process for or­gan­is­ing per­son­nel, trans­port, and dis­pos­al in the most part in co­or­di­na­tion with min­istry of­fi­cials across the coun­try who will be the no­ti­fy­ing agents of key dis­tricts, es­pe­cial­ly crop pro­duc­tion ar­eas af­fect­ed.

For bat con­trol, the min­istry said that ap­proval has been grant­ed for the re­cruit­ment of ten vet­eri­nary agents through the UWI School of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine who will work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with of­fi­cers from the min­istry, live­stock farm­ers and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

These projects re­port­ed­ly re­ceived an al­lo­ca­tion of $3 mil­lion dol­lars as part of the min­istry's bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for fis­cal 2022/2023.

On Sun­day, De­bideen Man­ick, the head of the Fe­lic­i­ty Food Crop Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, ques­tioned the slow roll out of the plans. Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, he ques­tioned the ex­e­cu­tion of the boun­ty sys­tem that was an­nounced.

The farmer said it was a good ini­tia­tive, but prop­er plan­ning is need­ed.

"It's ok to give things a try, but re­mem­ber Bar­ba­dos is small­er than T&T. This snail-for-sale plan may work, but there are av­enues for cor­rup­tion that must not be over­looked. We don’t want to see tax­pay­ers' dol­lars mis­man­aged and this pro­gramme tak­en light­ly, there must be su­per­vi­sion and ac­count­abil­i­ty at all lev­els."

The snails, he said, "must be in­cin­er­at­ed at col­lec­tion points where they are col­lect­ed. There can be no long-term dis­pos­al in heaps where the snail eggs can hatch be­cause we will be re­peat­ing this cy­cle."

Man­ick stressed that the project must be done in a man­ner which will not hurt agri­cul­ture in the coun­try.

He said pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion must be giv­en pri­or­i­ty be­cause sev­er­al peo­ple are still dis­pos­ing of dead snails in wa­ter­cours­es where hatch. "There is al­so the need for a wider bait­ing pro­gramme in agri­cul­tur­al lands where work­ers em­ployed by farm­ers can bait and re­move snails," he added.