RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Rice farm­ers in south­east Trinidad, who had pre­vi­ous­ly shut down their op­er­a­tions, are in­ter­est­ed in re-en­ter­ing the in­dus­try and are seek­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s help to do so.

They made the call Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein dis­trib­uted 200,000 pounds of high-yield­ing, dis­ease-re­sis­tant rice seeds to farm­ers at the Na­tion­al Seed Bank in Ch­aguara­mas last Tues­day.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, farmer Out­am Ram­nar­ine said many rice farm­ers could not op­er­ate be­cause of de­lays in get­ting pay­ments from the Na­tion­al Flour Mills, be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

He said farm­ers had loans with the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank and be­cause of soar­ing prices of fer­til­iz­ers, de­lays in pay­ments, and high op­er­at­ing costs they had no choice but to shut down op­er­a­tions and seek al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment.

“Farm­ers need sup­port to get back in­to the in­dus­try. Be­cause rice was no longer sus­tain­able, we start­ed us­ing our land for oth­er crops. Oth­er peo­ple just aban­doned the fields while oth­ers plant­ed rice on­ly for home use,” he ex­plained.

“In my case, we used to cul­ti­vate four acres of rice. If we are go­ing back in­to rice cul­ti­va­tion we will have to spend mon­ey to clear the land again. It will be dif­fi­cult for many peo­ple.”

Now that the min­is­ter seems adamant to restart T&T’s dwin­dling rice in­dus­try, Ram­nar­ine said they were hope­ful small-scale farm­ers will al­so ben­e­fit.

Mean­while, large-scale rice farmer Za­meer Akaloo, who ben­e­fit­ed from last Tues­day’s rice seed dis­tri­b­u­tion, ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion that the in­dus­try was be­ing re­vi­talised.

“This is def­i­nite­ly a step in the right di­rec­tion,” Akaloo said, not­ing that one of the ma­jor is­sues they faced was the lack of re­search in new rice farm­ing tech­niques.

“We have no re­search in Trinidad con­cern­ing rice and get­ting good qual­i­ty seeds from Guyana is a good start for us. We need tech­ni­cal in­for­ma­tion and re­search be­hind it. We asked if the Guyanese rice breed­ers could come to Trinidad and do a crash course with farm­ers on the new avail­able tech­nolo­gies,” he said.

Akaloo said NFM Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ian Mitchell has com­mit­ted to pay­ing farm­ers on time. He said the Gov­ern­ment should pro­vide a start­up grant for rice farm­ers as well as in­cen­tives for fu­el and fer­til­iz­ers.

On Tues­day, 30 farm­ers from across the na­tion re­ceived the seeds at the Na­tion­al Seed Bank in Ch­aguara­mas.

Min­is­ter Ho­sein said the ini­tia­tive came fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Guyanese Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali. The rice seeds were pur­chased by the Gov­ern­ment and were sup­plied by the Guyana Rice De­vel­op­ment Board (GRDB).

Ho­sein said the project was aligned with a Cari­com ini­tia­tive to re­duce the food im­port bill by 25 per cent by 2025, pro­mot­ing food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion.

“The fact that this ini­tia­tive aligned per­fect­ly with this an­niver­sary sug­gests some form of prov­i­dence, and I re­main con­fi­dent that we will suc­cess­ful­ly re­vi­talise the sec­tor,” Ho­sein said, em­pha­siz­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the rice dis­tri­b­u­tion project with­in the frame­work of the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) signed be­tween Guyana and T&T in Ju­ly 2022. The MOU out­lined col­lab­o­ra­tion ar­eas, in­clud­ing rice, aqua­cul­ture, live­stock pro­duc­tion, and co­conut.

Min­is­ter Ho­sein ex­pressed grat­i­tude to Guyanese Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Mustapha Zul­fikar for sup­port­ing the rice ini­tia­tive. He as­sured the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to re­vi­talise and mod­ernise the rice in­dus­try, aim­ing to re­duce re­liance on in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Ho­sein al­so re­vealed that ear­li­er this year, he had met with stake­hold­ers and al­lo­cat­ed $5 mil­lion for Phase One of the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion and mod­erni­sa­tion of the rice sec­tor.

Mean­while, Nigel Grimes, the tech­ni­cal ad­vis­er at the min­istry, high­light­ed the pos­i­tive im­pact the rice seed ini­tia­tive would have on lo­cal rice yield, pro­ject­ing an in­crease of 30-35 per cent.