Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram has sound­ed the alarm over bil­lions of dol­lars bleed­ing from Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my due to a decade-long de­cline in agri­cul­ture. And he has out­lined a plan to re­verse the trend through lo­cal pro­duc­tion and re­duced re­liance on im­ports.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the Pet Fam­i­ly Store at Icon­ic Plaza in Aranguez on Sat­ur­day, Rati­ram re­vealed that the coun­try’s food im­port bill has surged from $5 bil­lion to over $7.3 bil­lion in the last ten years, an in­crease he sug­gest­ed re­flects both glob­al pres­sures and do­mes­tic pol­i­cy fail­ures.

“What we have seen hap­pen­ing in the last ten years is our food im­port bill would have in­creased from five bil­lion to above sev­en bil­lion dol­lars… about $7.3 to $7.4 bil­lion,” he said, not­ing that the is­sue re­quired far greater na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

The min­is­ter point­ed to a sharp con­trac­tion in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, de­scrib­ing it as a “decade of de­struc­tion” that saw out­put fall by more than 50 per cent. Ac­cord­ing to Rati­ram, agri­cul­ture’s con­tri­bu­tion to GDP de­clined from $1.4 bil­lion to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $650 mil­lion.

“We have seen agri­cul­ture pro­duc­tion fall… by more than 50 per cent. These are not just my fig­ures. These are all on the CSO web­site,” he said.

Rati­ram linked the de­cline to sys­temic is­sues, in­clud­ing ne­glect­ed in­fra­struc­ture, poor wa­ter­course man­age­ment and what he de­scribed as the aban­don­ment of farm­ers by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. He said con­sul­ta­tions with more than 300 farm­ers across the coun­try re­vealed con­sis­tent com­plaints about flood­ing, lack of main­te­nance and in­suf­fi­cient state sup­port.

“Why did we aban­don our farm­ers?” he asked.

“That’s the most im­por­tant ques­tion we need to ask.”

The min­is­ter cit­ed a turn­around in Aranguez as ev­i­dence of what tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tion can achieve, not­ing that farm­ers who were se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by flood­ing in May 2025 saw re­lief af­ter the min­istry un­der­took a de­silt­ing and wa­ter­course main­te­nance pro­gramme.

“Af­ter June, not one of those farm­ers got flood­ed out be­cause all the wa­ter cours­es were clean,” he said.

To ad­dress the im­port bill and re­build do­mes­tic ca­pac­i­ty, Rati­ram an­nounced a proof-of-con­cept pi­lot project fo­cused on cul­ti­vat­ing key com­modi­ties such as soya bean, corn and black-eye peas—items that heav­i­ly in­flu­ence both food prices and im­port ex­pen­di­ture.

He not­ed that over 300,000 kilo­grammes of black-eye peas are im­port­ed an­nu­al­ly, while soya bean oil im­ports alone ex­ceed­ed $300 mil­lion in 2022 and in­creased fur­ther last year.

“Soya bean doesn’t on­ly con­tribute to oil, it al­so con­tributes to an­i­mal feed,” he said, adding that lo­cal corn pro­duc­tion would al­so sup­port feed man­u­fac­tur­ing.

The pi­lot project, cur­rent­ly span­ning two acres, is ex­pect­ed to ex­pand fol­low­ing eco­nom­ic and agro­nom­ic analy­sis, with the long-term goal of build­ing a sus­tain­able do­mes­tic sup­ply chain.

Rati­ram ac­knowl­edged that glob­al shocks such as those ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic will con­tin­ue to im­pact sup­ply chains, but stressed that Gov­ern­ment must act where it has con­trol.

“We are not in con­trol of glob­al dis­rup­tions, but what we are in con­trol of is how we man­age our re­sources,” he said.

He al­so point­ed to in­creased agri­cul­tur­al out­put be­tween May and De­cem­ber 2025 com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2024, at­tribut­ing the gains to tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions and im­proved co­or­di­na­tion with the Min­istry of Trade.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, the rise in pro­duc­tion has al­ready be­gun to sta­bilise food prices, with av­er­age mar­ket costs show­ing a down­ward trend since the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice.

“The on­ly way we can con­tin­ue to low­er the price of food is by in­creas­ing agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion,” he said.

Rati­ram main­tained that the Gov­ern­ment’s strat­e­gy is firm­ly fo­cused on re­build­ing the sec­tor, boost­ing do­mes­tic out­put, and re­duc­ing the coun­try’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to ex­ter­nal shocks while claw­ing back bil­lions lost through years of un­der­per­for­mance.