SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

T&T’s food im­port bill is now the high­est it has ever been—a stag­ger­ing $7.3 bil­lion. For con­text, that is more than the Gov­ern­ment spends on its Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) an­nu­al­ly. The aim of the PSIP is to de­liv­er bet­ter qual­i­ty in­ter­ven­tions, val­ue for mon­ey and en­hanced pos­i­tive ef­fects to cit­i­zens.

In fis­cal 2022, the food im­port bill was $7.2 bil­lion. For years, the bill av­er­aged a lit­tle over $5 bil­lion.

In bud­get 2025, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said ef­forts to ad­dress food se­cu­ri­ty re­main a top pri­or­i­ty as the Gov­ern­ment had es­tab­lished a Food Se­cu­ri­ty and Food Prices Com­mit­tee to tack­le the mul­ti­fac­eted is­sue of ris­ing food prices and en­sure ad­e­quate ac­cess to af­ford­able and nu­tri­tious food.

Ac­cord­ing to the Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) cam­pus, Prof Mark Wud­di­vi­ra, the amount the coun­try is spend­ing to im­port food is not sus­tain­able.

He said spend­ing ex­or­bi­tant sums of mon­ey on im­port­ed food items un­der­mines the na­tion’s food se­cu­ri­ty, is un­re­al­is­tic, and puts us in a pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion.

“We are tread­ing on a very pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion con­sid­er­ing the food im­port bill, which of course un­der­mines food se­cu­ri­ty. A food im­port bill of $7.3 bil­lion is un­re­al­is­tic any­where for a small coun­try like ours.

“I am con­cerned about what is go­ing on and where we are with our food im­por­ta­tion. We are not in a good place,” he told Guardian Me­dia last week.

He said sev­er­al fac­tors would have led to the bill soar­ing, cit­ing the on­go­ing con­flict be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine, ship­ping lo­gis­tics, and cli­mate change as ex­am­ples.

He said in­creas­ing food pro­duc­tion was one as­pect of re­duc­ing the bill, while we al­so need to look at the “val­ue chain” that would in­volve the use of sci­ence, re­search, tech­nol­o­gy, in­no­va­tion, and mar­ket­ing “to trans­form the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and make it more pro­duc­tive.”

Turn to tech­nol­o­gy, high­er tax­es on lux­u­ry items–Prof Wud­di­vi­ra

With farm­ers leav­ing their fields due to old age, high pro­duc­tion costs, and a lack of in­cen­tives, Wud­di­vi­ra de­scribed this as a both­er­some sit­u­a­tion.

He said it was im­per­a­tive to turn to tech­nol­o­gy to bail the coun­try out. In de­vel­oped coun­tries, he said, tech­nol­o­gy has been play­ing a ma­jor role in the op­er­a­tions of farms. The Caribbean, he said, was vul­ner­a­ble to many things, in­clud­ing eco­nom­ic in­sta­bil­i­ty.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that we can­not grow and man­u­fac­ture every­thing we eat, Wud­di­vi­ra said it would be far cheap­er to im­port some foods, some of which have no nu­tri­tion­al val­ue and are loaded with fats, sug­ars, and salt, which lead to non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases that put a “bur­den on the State” and the coun­try’s health care sys­tem.

The Gov­ern­ment, he said, may have to look at im­pos­ing high­er tax­es on the im­por­ta­tion of ex­ot­ic and lux­u­ry food items.

In 2021, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon dis­closed that T&T had spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $78 mil­lion a year over the last three years on the im­por­ta­tion of lux­u­ry food items.

“It should be not­ed,” she said, “that over the last three years, 2018-2020, im­ports of se­lect­ed lux­u­ry items such as smoked salmon, lob­ster, grapes, ap­ples, pears, straw­ber­ries, peach­es, and oth­er fruits (were) val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $78 mil­lion per an­num, on av­er­age.”

In 2017, for­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat said of the $5.4 bil­lion food im­port bill, $669 mil­lion was spent on al­co­hol im­ports.

An­oth­er is­sue, Wud­di­vi­ra said, that has be­come a per­sis­tent prob­lem for the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty is prae­di­al lar­ce­ny.

“It is some­thing that af­fects farm­ers tremen­dous­ly. Af­ter these farm­ers have toiled on their lands their crops are stolen. That is a se­ri­ous is­sue that needs to be ad­dressed.” He sug­gest­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of a vi­able seed bank to ramp up food pro­duc­tion.

Im­port bill to rise–Prof Wayne Gan­pat

Prof Wayne Gan­pat, for­mer dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at UWI, is pre­dict­ing a fur­ther rise in the food im­port bill.

“The food im­port bill will con­tin­ue to rise be­cause we have not ad­just­ed to our taste. We con­tin­ue to want these ex­ot­ic, lux­u­ri­ous items to put on our plates, and that is go­ing to cost us more. Even young peo­ple are buy­ing in­to the nar­ra­tive of these ex­ot­ic foods. That is the way they want to go. We no longer want our lo­cal teas and cof­fee, we want for­eign brands,” he said.

The move to in­crease the tar­iff on lux­u­ry foods three years ago did not dis­suade con­sumers from buy­ing, Gan­pat added. “Peo­ple are pay­ing the high­er prices.”

Gan­pat said it may be dif­fi­cult to ban the im­por­ta­tion of lux­u­ri­ous foods based on our free trade agree­ments and open mar­kets. He said the vol­ume of French fries we im­port an­nu­al­ly “would shock you,” stat­ing that if we were cul­ti­vat­ing sweet pota­toes on a mega scale, this could have re­placed the French fries and helped slash our bill.

“We have to rapid­ly ramp up food pro­duc­tion. Our coun­try ought to have suf­fi­cient cov­er of food giv­en what is tak­ing place glob­al­ly with cli­mate change. We need to ob­tain food se­cu­ri­ty and sov­er­eign­ty.”

Weigh­ing in on the Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com’s com­mit­ment to re­duce the re­gion’s food im­port bill by 25 per cent–in the re­gion of US$6 bil­lion by 2025, Gan­pat said this ini­tia­tive was dis­cussed among Cari­com mem­bers in 2022. As we ap­proach 2025, Gan­pat said this goal was un­re­al­is­tic for T&T.

“That would have to be pushed for­ward sim­ply be­cause we would not be able to achieve that. We are not see­ing the ef­forts be­ing rolled out. Every Cari­com coun­try is sup­posed to pro­duce a cer­tain amount of food items for them­selves, and we are not see­ing that hap­pen­ing in Trinidad.”

Agri­cul­tur­al pro­grammes of­fered by the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice are yet to reap re­wards, as the learn­ing curve for young farm­ers will be long. He said Guyana was leaps and bounds ahead of many Caribbean coun­tries in food pro­duc­tion, as their agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor was rapid­ly ap­proach­ing food se­cu­ri­ty through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of key ini­tia­tives and a vi­brant farmer net­work.

Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali has been in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in agri­cul­ture, mak­ing the coun­try a force to be reck­oned with. Ad­dress­ing the 46th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of Cari­com in Ju­ly, Ali, who is Cari­com’s chair­man for Agri­cul­ture and Nu­tri­tion Se­cu­ri­ty, re­port­ed that the re­gion was mak­ing mea­sured progress to­wards re­gion­al food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty, with the April 2024 Cari­com/World Food Pro­gramme Liveli­hood Sur­vey in­di­cat­ing a 17 per cent re­duc­tion in food in­se­cu­ri­ty.

The meet­ing stat­ed that by the first quar­ter of 2024, Cari­com Mem­ber States had record­ed a 30 per cent achieve­ment of tar­gets set and a 12 per cent de­cline in re­al im­ports, equal to a quar­ter of a bil­lion dol­lars.

No sim­ple fix—Dr Hutchin­son

Head of the De­part­ment of Agri­cul­tur­al Eco­nom­ics and Ex­ten­sion at UWI Dr Sharon Hutchin­son said re­duc­ing T&T’s food bill would not be a sim­ple fix. “It has been in­creas­ing as­tro­nom­i­cal­ly. It’s too much. It’s not like­ly to change im­me­di­ate­ly.”

The bill, she said, has been putting a strain on our for­eign ex­change. “When you need so much for­eign ex­change just to pur­chase food, it means you have less for­eign ex­change to pur­chase oth­er goods and ser­vices.”

Hutchin­son at­trib­uted the rise in the bill to peo­ple’s pref­er­ence for cer­tain foods, a gap in pro­duc­tion, and con­sumers have been pur­chas­ing more con­ve­nient foods that re­quire less time in the kitchen.

“Those kinds of meals are in de­mand. That is what is dri­ving it (the food im­port bill), and un­less we have com­pet­i­tive­ly priced sub­sti­tutes for what we want as con­sumers, then that de­mand for im­port­ed food is go­ing to con­tin­ue to be strong.”

The im­por­ta­tion of dairy prod­ucts, ce­re­als, meats, and seafood, Hutchin­son said, are “big tick­et items.”

In 2020, Gopee-Scoon re­vealed in Par­lia­ment dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Bill (2021) that the coun­try had spent over $2 bil­lion on the im­por­ta­tion of ce­re­als, fruits, and veg­eta­bles in 2019, which she ad­mit­ted was cre­at­ing a se­ri­ous drain on valu­able for­eign ex­change.

“Of that amount, $1.1 bil­lion each was spent on ce­re­als, fruits, and veg­eta­bles. We spend TT$180 mil­lion on bis­cuits, bread, and pas­tries and TT$28 mil­lion on mix­es and doughs. I say this to say that there is a con­text for de­ci­sions tak­en to curb for­eign ex­change leak­ages,” Gopee-Scoon told the House.

While food prices have been re­duc­ing glob­al­ly since 2022, Hutchin­son said we have not been see­ing a sim­i­lar de­cline at the lo­cal lev­el. “Our food prices are not mir­ror­ing glob­al prices.”

She em­pha­sised the need for val­ue-added prod­ucts. Hutchin­son said most of the rice we con­sume was grown out­side of T&T. The Gov­ern­ment im­ports an­nu­al­ly 34,000 plus tonnes of white and par­boiled rice, cost­ing an av­er­age of US$32 mil­lion.

State-owned Na­tion­al Flour Mills, which has a rice mill in Carlsen Field, has no fa­cil­i­ties to pro­duce par­boiled rice.

Hutchin­son said, “There are some things that I think we are still miss­ing, and we need to work more on in­creas­ing rice pro­duc­tion. Not be­ing able to feed your­self is a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sue as well. No­body should be able to starve our coun­try.”

She added that “tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions” and a boost in lo­cal pro­duc­tion are crit­i­cal in ob­tain­ing food sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Asked if we learnt any­thing from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Hutchin­son said we have not learnt enough to make sig­nif­i­cant changes in our food sys­tem. She said there was a dis­con­nect be­tween what is need­ed and the co­or­di­na­tion of re­sources to make things hap­pen.

“Every year it’s the same thing. So, if you have a sec­tor with the same prob­lems for ten and 20 years, you are go­ing to have a prob­lem ramp­ing up your pro­duc­tion.”