SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

The price of fresh pro­duce has been steadi­ly in­creas­ing over the past sev­er­al weeks, with some veg­eta­bles dou­bling and even tripling in cost.

It is the lat­est in­crease to hit con­sumers as the cost of liv­ing con­tin­ues to rise.

At the Ch­agua­nas Mar­ket yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Ch­agua­nas Ven­dors Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Crys­tal Dil­lon said the prices of nu­mer­ous veg­eta­bles have in­creased at whole­sale mar­kets na­tion­wide.

“Right now, cab­bage go­ing up, caraille, me­l­on­gene, sweet pep­pers sky­rock­et­ed, ochroes, bo­di,” Dil­lon said.

But she said the ven­dors are not the ones dri­ving up the prices.

“The price is sub­ject to the cost that we pay, so if the whole­salers, which are farm­ers as well, tend to have a high­er price be­cause of their chem­i­cals, trans­porta­tion, labour, we don’t have a choice but to buy it be­cause there is al­ways a de­mand,” she said.

Omesh Dood­nath, who runs a mar­ket stall along Are­na Road in Freeport, said he paid $20 per pound for me­l­on­gene at the Ma­coya Farm­ers’ Mar­ket ear­li­er this week.

Dood­nath said he was hold­ing off on pur­chas­ing more stock as many of his cus­tomers could not cope with the high­er prices.

“I am sell­ing it off at the same price I pay be­cause peo­ple buy­ing but they not buy­ing like they used to. Re­mem­ber it ex­pen­sive, if you re­al­ly need it, you will buy it,” Dood­nath said.

Ch­agua­nas mar­ket ven­dor Mala See­ta­hal said the cost of pump­kins and some ground pro­vi­sions have al­so in­creased over the past sev­er­al weeks.

“Pump­kin was $1.50 and now it is $2.50, every­thing just went up,” See­ta­hal said.

She said some con­sumers were leav­ing emp­ty-hand­ed when they vis­it the mar­ket as they sim­ply can­not af­ford the in­creased prices.

“Who could buy they buy and who can’t buy, they can’t af­ford, some­times we give things to peo­ple, it tough for every­body,” she said.

One con­sumer, who gave his name on­ly as Tony, said while he was not hap­py with the in­creas­es, he had lit­tle choice but to con­tin­ue pur­chas­ing the fresh pro­duce he en­joys eat­ing.

Tony said he does not blame the ven­dors for the high prices.

“Ven­dors are fac­ing the same eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion that we are fac­ing, prices in the gro­cery go­ing up, the on­ly re­course they have is to raise the price of their pro­duce so they could go in the gro­cery to buy the same things that all of us have to buy,” Tony said.

He said he prefers to buy lo­cal and sup­port lo­cal farm­ers.

Our Guardian Me­dia team vis­it­ed sev­er­al farm­ers in Aranguez, San Juan, seek­ing to find the cause of the price in­creas­es.

Aranguez Unit­ed Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion gen­er­al sec­re­tary Bharath Ram­per­sad said sev­er­al fac­tors are dri­ving the in­creas­es.

“Seeds have be­come scarce on the mar­ket and the peo­ple who usu­al­ly im­port these are com­plain­ing about the lack of for­eign ex­change. The cost of fer­til­iz­er has dou­bled, in some cas­es tripled, plus labour is al­so a fac­tor,” Ram­per­sad said.

He said re­cent ad­verse weath­er has al­so con­tributed great­ly to the in­creas­es, as many crops were af­fect­ed by ex­cess rain­fall and flood­ing. Ram­per­sad said for years, farm­ers have been “sub­si­dis­ing” pro­duce so con­sumers don’t face the full brunt of the cost of pro­duc­tion. But he said it is not a prac­tice they can con­tin­ue.

“Just a month ago toma­toes was giv­ing away. Now, toma­toes, the price has in­creased, baigan, a month ago the price was $2.50 now again, be­cause of the ad­verse weath­er con­di­tions, the price has es­ca­lat­ed,” he said.

Ram­per­sad slammed the Gov­ern­ment, say­ing not enough was be­ing done to as­sist farm­ers, some of whom suf­fer ma­jor loss­es every rainy sea­son.

“How could we want to be food se­cure when the farm­ers are treat­ed like mats? They wipe their foot on us and go their way,” he said.

He ex­plained that sup­ply and de­mand of­ten dic­tate the prices at the mar­ket.

“We don’t de­cide on the price we go­ing to sell it for when we reach to the mar­ket, de­pends on what the de­mand is, so we have to sell be­cause our pro­duce is per­ish­able,” Ram­per­sad said.

Me­l­on­gene farmer Rakesh Ramkay ex­plained how con­tin­u­ous and pro­longed rain­fall af­fects the trees in his field.

“The root will start to rot, we have to put chem­i­cals for the root so it will keep ac­tive so it doesn’t get too moist and start to rot. Then the me­l­on­gene will get mildew, it will get strips, so we have to spray for those kinds of stuff when the rain falling, the leaves will start to crim­ple, we have leaf min­ers, we have strips on the me­l­on­gene, all of those things we have to keep spray­ing,” Ramkay said.

He said dur­ing the dry sea­son when there is less rain­fall, farm­ers do not have to spend as much to main­tain their crops. He said labour costs were al­so in­creas­ing as farm hands try to cope with the ris­ing cost of liv­ing.

The high cost of veg­eta­bles was al­so raised on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, when per­sons who pur­chased a pack­et of a par­tic­u­lar veg­etable at one ma­jor su­per­mar­ket chain ex­pressed sur­prise at its ex­or­bi­tant cost.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent Daryl Ram­per­sad said the ne­glect of the sec­tor was caus­ing the in­creas­es. He said many farm­ers who plant near wa­ter­cours­es lost large por­tions of their crops to flood­ing with last week­end’s ex­cess rain­fall.

“In very few ar­eas, you can now see equip­ment go­ing in to dredge wa­ter­cours­es, this is un­ac­cept­able. We have farm­ers who lost 60 per cent of their crops when rivers over­flow,” he said.