Plum Mi­tan farm­ers say they plan to es­ca­late their crop pro­duc­tion, now that Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein has up­grad­ed the Cal­too Bridge.

Pro­vid­ing vi­tal ac­cess to over 400 farm­ers in this east­ern com­mu­ni­ty, the bridge up­grade was a promise Ho­sein had made to farm­ers af­ter tour­ing the area fol­low­ing floods last No­vem­ber.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia last week, farmer Han­sraj Ram­lal said farm­ers were grate­ful that the bridge is now pass­able.

“Be­fore, we had no choice but to pass on the side. We used a tem­po­rary bridge but we could not get our pro­duce out in large quan­ti­ties. Many farm­ers had to use al­ter­na­tive routes but now that the bridge is fixed, more farm­ers will go in­to pro­duc­tion,” Han­sraj said.

He com­mend­ed Min­is­ter Ho­sein for keep­ing his promise to fix the bridge.

Dur­ing the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the bridge last Wednes­day, Ho­sein re­called his vis­it to the re­gion af­ter dev­as­tat­ing floods in No­vem­ber last year.

Ex­press­ing sat­is­fac­tion with the time­ly project de­liv­ery, Ho­sein said: “Road­ways and ac­cess bridges like the Cal­too Bridge are es­sen­tial in­fra­struc­tures that spur the growth and pros­per­i­ty of the agri­cul­ture sec­tor. We had promised to re­store this vi­tal link, and to­day, I am pleased that we could de­liv­er on this com­mit­ment.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of Plum Mi­tan’s farm­ers to the coun­try’s food sup­ply chain, Ho­sein said: “This area is home to over 400 ded­i­cat­ed farm­ers cul­ti­vat­ing more than 1,200 acres of land and it plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in bol­ster­ing our na­tion’s food se­cu­ri­ty.”

He said the Plum Mi­tan Agri­cul­tur­al Project was well known for its di­verse crop pro­duc­tion, which in­clud­ed cu­cum­bers, hot pep­pers, wa­ter­mel­ons and corn.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Avinash Singh, al­so com­mend­ed the farm­ers, em­pha­sis­ing the es­ca­lat­ing im­por­tance of agri­cul­ture and food pro­duc­tion.

He al­so urged the pub­lic to tap in­to the pletho­ra of grants and in­cen­tives de­signed to as­sist farm­ers and boost the sec­tor’s growth.

“Agri­cul­ture and food pro­duc­tion are emerg­ing as ‘in-de­mand’ pro­fes­sions in this era. I strong­ly urge all in­ter­est­ed in­di­vid­u­als to ex­plore the nu­mer­ous grants that are read­i­ly avail­able to as­sist farm­ers. It’s time to take ad­van­tage of these op­por­tu­ni­ties,” Singh said.

He urged cit­i­zens to vis­it the of­fi­cial min­istry web­site, agri­cul­ture.gov.tt, for de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on the var­i­ous in­cen­tives and grants pro­vid­ed by the min­istry.

Al­so at­tend­ing the event was Coomarie Goolab­s­ingh, Act­ing Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, along with the Head of En­gi­neer­ing, Michelle Shah, and oth­er tech­ni­cal sup­port staff.