Faced with the threat of food short­ages ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the COVID pan­dem­ic and the Russ­ian/Ukraine war, Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi says T&T is form­ing part­ner­ships with Guyana as part of its food sus­tain­abil­i­ty strate­gies.

Speak­ing at the launch of the Food and Agri­cul­ture ex­po at the Gulf City Shop­ping Com­plex yes­ter­day, Al- Rawi said Guyanese Pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hammed Ir­faan Ali will be com­ing to T&T on Au­gust 17 to en­gage in talks.

“It’s time to dream. Mon­ey does grow on trees, it’s called agri­cul­ture. Cor­po­rate ini­tia­tives do ex­ist. The Prime Min­is­ter has led the charge in re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, which is why the Pres­i­dent of Guyana will be here on the 17th of Au­gust to en­sure that the land space of Guyana is avail­able to the whole of Cari­com.”

He said pro­vid­ing food sus­tain­abil­i­ty and im­port sub­sti­tu­tion is no longer just talk.

“Hav­ing spent sev­en years pass­ing laws of this coun­try, I can vouch that agri­cul­ture in this coun­try is 100 per cent tax-free. The in­cen­tives do ex­ist,” he said.

He praised Southex Pro­mo­tions, the T&T Cham­ber and the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion for host­ing the ex­po to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for agri­cul­tur­al en­tre­pre­neurs.

Mean­while, T&T Cham­ber pres­i­dent Charles Pash­ley said food se­cu­ri­ty has tak­en cen­tre stage in the glob­al dis­cus­sion.

“I think we have to recog­nise that even as we dis­cuss food se­cu­ri­ty, we must know that it re­quires a long-term in­vest­ment in re­search and de­vel­op­ment, as well as var­ied in­fra­struc­tur­al works and a com­mit­ment by the stake­hold­ers—pri­vate sec­tor and gov­ern­ment,” Pash­ley said.

Ac­cord­ing to an on­line pub­li­ca­tion from Knoe­ma, Pash­ley said agri­cul­tur­al land area in Trinidad and To­ba­go “fell grad­u­al­ly from 980 square kilo­me­tres in 1969 to 540 square kilo­me­tres in 2018.”

“Preser­va­tion of our re­main­ing agri­cul­tur­al land for agri­cul­tur­al pur­pos­es ought to be recog­nised as an im­por­tant part of our na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment agen­da. Hap­pi­ly, tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances have made high-yield, small-space farm­ing and pro­cess­ing pos­si­ble and we can now max­imise this,” he added.

He not­ed that sev­er­al en­tre­pre­neurs have recog­nised the sec­tor’s po­ten­tial and there are now more pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ments.

“Just re­cent­ly, Guyana’s Vice Pres­i­dent, re­fer­ring to Cari­com’s goal of in­creas­ing agri­cul­tur­al out­put by US$1.5 bil­lion by 2025, es­ti­mat­ed that US$7.5 bil­lion more in pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment is re­quired if the re­gion is to reach that tar­get,” he said.

Mean­while, De­o­dath Ram­jat­tan, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Plant Doc­tors Hy­droAqua Lim­it­ed, said the Guyanese part­ner­ship was a wel­comed ini­tia­tive.

“The soil right now has many dis­eases and nu­tri­tion qual­i­ty is de­plet­ed over the years. We are us­ing a lot of or­gan­ic ma­te­ri­als now, so things are grow­ing nat­u­ral­ly,” he said.

Ram­jat­tan has trained hun­dreds of farm­ers over the years in new agri­cul­tur­al tech­niques.

“When we get the ini­tia­tive with Guyana, we are think­ing about us­ing the rice hull, and the sug­ar cane bagasse to make a soil putting it to­geth­er in blocks and sell­ing to farm­ers and house­hold­ers so they can grow their food or­gan­i­cal­ly,” he added.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture Avinash Singh said re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion was high on the Gov­ern­ment’s agri­cul­tur­al agen­da as it re­lates to Caribbean food se­cu­ri­ty.

“Based on the talks we held at the last vis­it, Guyana is mak­ing land space avail­able for our feed proces­sors to get raw ma­te­ri­als to cre­ate the feed,” he re­vealed.

Singh added: “It doesn’t make sense for us to get raw ma­te­ri­als from far coun­tries when right here from our Cari­com neigh­bour, we can get raw ma­te­ri­als to cre­ate feeds.”

He said the T&T del­e­ga­tion had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see the ge­net­ic ma­te­r­i­al grown with wheat and the corn tri­als and these were very promis­ing.

The ex­po has 40 booths and will run un­til Sun­day, when it will end with a farm­ers’ mar­ket.