RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

New­ly mint­ed Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Ravi Rati­ram, says he plans to tack­le a 60 per cent staff short­age across his min­istry, be­fore slash­ing the $7.3 bil­lion food im­port bill by $2 bil­lion.

He says he is al­so aim­ing to boost agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports by $1 bil­lion over the next five years.

Al­though he was not cho­sen by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress to con­test the Cou­va North seat or any con­stituen­cy, Rati­ram says his re­turn as Sen­a­tor and Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter was not a re­ward for par­ty loy­al­ty or pol­i­tics but be­cause of his loy­al­ty to farm­ers and fish­er­folk when he was shad­ow min­is­ter in op­po­si­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Rati­ram said as Min­is­ter, one of his first tasks will be to ad­dress the staff short­age. “When we look at Hu­man Re­sources with­in the min­istry, we’re av­er­ag­ing 60 per cent of what is on the struc­ture is va­cant. We have ex­ten­sion of­fi­cers who have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­vise farm­ers, but it’s a skele­tal staff,” Rati­ram said.

He ex­plained that this staff short­age has left farm­ers with­out prop­er train­ing and tech­ni­cal guid­ance.

Rati­ram said he is ful­ly aware of the is­sues af­fect­ing farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties from Ve­ga de Oropouche to Moru­ga and Ce­dros.

“Is­sues have been the same—land tenure, high cost of pro­duc­tion, pest man­age­ment, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny,” he not­ed. “Now that I am in the po­si­tion, I in­tend to work to­wards fix­ing them.”

Apart from fill­ing va­can­cies, Rati­ram wants to in­vest in farmer train­ing with the vi­sion of re­duc­ing the $7.3 bil­lion food im­port bill by $2 bil­lion over the next five years. He said he al­so wants to in­crease agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports by $1 bil­lion un­der his tenure. “Agri­cul­ture can con­tribute to the econ­o­my as a for­eign ex­change earn­er. We will use it to boost for­eign ex­change by en­sur­ing we in­crease ex­ports by $1 bil­lion and cre­ate job op­por­tu­ni­ties for youths,” he said. He point­ed out that many young peo­ple are in­ter­est­ed in agri­cul­ture but can­not reg­is­ter as farm­ers due to the lack of land tenure.

Rati­ram al­so con­demned the treat­ment of farm­ers who face dev­as­tat­ing floods and of­ten com­plain about com­pen­sa­tion.

“Farm­ers cul­ti­vate crops, rains come, and lands are flood­ed be­cause agen­cies fail to main­tain wa­ter­cours­es. When they ap­ply for com­pen­sa­tion, they get noth­ing. This type of heart­less be­hav­iour must stop,” he de­clared. “We must give farm­ers the re­spect they de­serve.”

He al­so point­ed to past suc­cess­es that could be repli­cat­ed.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Sad­dam Ho­sein, al­so ac­knowl­edged the deep-root­ed land tenure is­sues, par­tic­u­lar­ly in South and Cen­tral Trinidad.

“This is­sue of out­stand­ing land tenure is long­stand­ing. I was briefed, and we are meet­ing heads of dif­fer­ent de­part­ments, in­clud­ing the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands,” Ho­sein said.

Agron­o­mist Akanath Singh said farm­ers are des­per­ate for more hands-on ef­fort to deal with crop dis­eases.

“More tech­ni­cal sup­port and guid­ance are ur­gent­ly need­ed at the soil lev­el to as­sist farm­ers in re­duc­ing crop loss­es from in­sect pests and dis­eases, but al­so to pro­duce food in a more sus­tain­able and or­gan­ic way,” Singh said.