Akash Sama­roo

A Guardian Me­dia team got a sur­prise in the east­ern vil­lage of Plum Mi­tan on Thurs­day.

Al­most two dozen an­gry farm­ers blocked the path of the team on our ar­rival. A few of them held plac­ards.

“D Food Bas­ket closed down,” one of them said.

An­oth­er de­clared, “No Bridge, No Food.”

It turned out that they got wind of the vis­it by Guardian Me­dia and quick­ly de­cid­ed to hold an im­promp­tu demon­stra­tion to high­light the wor­ry­ing state of an ac­cess bridge to the com­mu­ni­ty’s farm­lands.

And while the main pur­pose of the vis­it was to fo­cus on an an­nounce­ment by farm­ers of ris­ing food costs due to flood­ing, Guardian Me­dia soon re­alised there were many is­sues that are now forc­ing the or­di­nary con­sumer to pay the price.

“Plum Mi­tan is a food bas­ket, 45 per cent of the peo­ple who go in­to Ma­coya and Port-of-Spain mar­kets come from here, so we need as­sis­tance to get this bridge fixed. Too long we have heard monies have been al­lo­cat­ed but noth­ing has been done,” said Ram­raj Sama­roo. Sama­roo showed that the bridge was on the brink of col­lapse and had sunk so low that the wa­ter un­der the bridge now cov­ers it dur­ing heavy rain­fall.

Most of the en­tourage then fol­lowed the news team in­to the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty, where we were told al­most 300 farm­ers grow their crops. They took the team to a wa­ter chan­nel and it’s there, among the wa­ter hy­acinths and oth­er in­va­sive veg­e­ta­tion, we met Khushi­lal Sook­nanan and his crew.

Their job is to clean the wa­ter­ways for the farm­ers but they be­lieve their em­ploy­ers, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, could make their job eas­i­er and more ef­fi­cient.

“Our work is very im­por­tant to the farm­ers but as you saw, we are do­ing it by hand. By hand, this wa­ter chan­nel will take us about three months to clean. If we had the ma­chine, this could be done in a day and a half,” said Sook­nanan, who added that he could not be­lieve in the year 2022 they are still op­er­at­ing un­der these con­di­tions.

In an­oth­er part of the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty, Curt Seeda­nee said the re­cent heavy rain­fall had cost him over $100,000. Seeda­nee isn’t on­ly blam­ing the clogged wa­ter chan­nels but the pumps in the area.

There are two pump sites - one works, the oth­er doesn’t. At the site of the lat­ter, Seeda­nee ex­plained that the pumps were re­moved in 2020, with the promise that they would be re­placed. How­ev­er, a small­er tem­po­rary pump was in­stalled in­stead and they say with the vol­ume of rain­fall be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced, it is not fit for pur­pose.

“This is just down to bad man­age­ment. They as­sured us they were go­ing to put down a big pump, it had three 18-inch pumps and now they put a 12-inch.”

The paw paw farmer said if the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry had kept their word, the flood­ing they ex­pe­ri­enced in Au­gust and Oc­to­ber could have been avoid­ed and they wouldn’t now be seek­ing to re­coup their loss­es by ad­just­ing their prices.

“Every­thing will have to pass on to the con­sumer, watch paw paw price, it reach­es $5 whole­sale but that could have re­mained $3 if the sys­tem worked,” Seeda­nee added.

Mean­while, Bridge­lal Singh said farm­ers have had to en­dure pre­cip­i­tous ris­es in the cost of seeds and chem­i­cals.

“Since I start­ed in farm­ing to now, things have gone up al­most 1,000 per cent. A 50-pound bag of salt is $350, that used to be less than $100,” Singh ex­plained.

Singh said the con­sumer will have to pay more.

“Most of the veg­eta­bles will go up,” Singh said, while al­so com­plain­ing about the pumps, “That is what does mash we up boy, I lose plen­ty this year al­ready.”

And while the men and women said they are still in love with the pro­fes­sion, they said it’s get­ting hard for them to keep the same pas­sion they once had or to mo­ti­vate oth­ers.

“My son done tell me he not do­ing any farm­ing,” one man said while tend­ing to his bo­di plants.

Con­tact­ed, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein as­sured he will reach out to the af­fect­ed farm­ers to find a so­lu­tion to the pump and bridge is­sues. He said he has been in of­fice for on­ly a few months and was un­aware of these is­sues. He said hav­ing been told of the is­sues, he will meet with the farm­ers to find a so­lu­tion.