CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Fast food restau­rants are closed and peo­ple are be­ing told to stay in­doors, and giv­en these con­di­tions, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­vised that peo­ple cook at home.

Now, the gov­ern­ment is tak­ing it one step fur­ther and is en­cour­ag­ing every­one to grow their food as well.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries said the gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to be­come a cat­a­lyst in the area of home gar­den­ing.

“Af­ter dis­cussing with the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, Cab­i­net col­leagues, and Min­istry staff, we would pro­vide 50,000 house­holds across Trinidad and To­ba­go with a pack­age con­tain­ing six seed va­ri­eties - bo­di, corn, me­l­on­gene, seim, pi­geon peas, and ochro. Sor­rel and pump­kin would be avail­able lat­er on,” the Min­is­ter said.

He ex­plained that with the on­set of COVID-19 in Trinidad and To­ba­go, nu­mer­ous cit­i­zens and even Cab­i­net col­leagues and MPs ap­proached him to en­cour­age house­hold­ers to set up or ex­pand kitchen/home gar­dens.

Min­is­ter Ramb­harat had some ad­vice for the pub­lic.

“We need to take com­plete con­trol over what we eat, when we eat, how much we eat and why we eat. Buy­ing most of our meals does not give us that lev­el of con­trol. We eat what­ev­er is sold to us with­out re­gard to our health risks; our nu­tri­tion­al re­quire­ments; our al­ler­gies and things we need to avoid and most im­por­tant­ly our por­tion sizes.”

He added that Trinidad and To­ba­go has made small steps, but mean­ing­ful ones.

“But the true chal­lenge is not what and how we pro­duce, but it is this. We are eat­ing our­selves to death. We, you and I, have ig­nored re­ports that can­not be chal­lenged. Lifestyle dis­eases are killing us and be­fore that they are re­duc­ing the lev­el of en­joy­ment in our lives.”

Apart from this, the Min­is­ter said he has been en­cour­ag­ing house­hold­ers to al­so grow their own plant “phar­ma­cy”.

“There are com­pelling rea­sons for house­hold­ers to plant some­thing “med­i­c­i­nal” in or around the place they live. This in­cludes fever-grass (lemon­grass), turmer­ic, gin­ger, lime leaves, tul­si, or­ange peel, car­ilee, rough-skin-lemon, bay leaf, aloe, won­der-of-the world, hot pep­per, gar­lic. Even cu­cum­ber for man­ag­ing wa­ter re­ten­tion. For more com­plex ap­pli­ca­tions some house­holds have can­dle­stick, ver­ven, Cat’s Claw, ring­worm bush, shin­ing bush, chan­de­lier, ratch­et, bach­e­lor but­ton and ze­bapeek.”

He said in some house­holds the month­ly med­i­cine bill may ac­tu­al­ly ex­ceed the month­ly mar­ket bill.

To help with the home gar­dens the Min­is­ter said they are al­so pro­vid­ing train­ing and tech­ni­cal ad­vice.

“We are al­so di­rect­ing cit­i­zens to some of the suc­cess­ful gar­den­ers and farm­ers who pro­mote their ac­tiv­i­ties on­line and on tele­vi­sion.”

He said the Namde­v­co Farm­ers Mar­kets would al­so have spe­cif­ic sec­tions des­ig­nat­ed for home gar­den­ers sell­ing ex­cess pro­duce and young per­sons sell­ing food prod­ucts to meet ed­u­ca­tion­al and oth­er per­son­al goals.