Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Agri­cul­ture is a way of life for Avinash Singh. He's proud to be a farmer.But he doesn't want peo­ple to judge him be­cause he said no one knows how dif­fi­cult it is to be a farmer in the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment."Farm­ing has been my pas­sion from birth. Farm­ing is why I am who I am to­day," he said.The young en­tre­pre­neur was born and raised in a fam­i­ly of farm­ers and, at 24, en­joys every minute of what he does–man­ag­ing close to 150 acres of land.

The fam­i­ly busi­ness is the largest sup­pli­er of sweet pota­toes in the coun­try.Singh, a staunch Hin­du, born in Fe­lic­i­ty, is the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for the Ju­ly 29 Ch­agua­nas West by-elec­tion.He said the PNM was the most dis­ci­plined and well-struc­tured or­gan­i­sa­tion, the on­ly in­sti­tu­tion that had faced the test of time and was still stand­ing.

"The PNM is def­i­nite­ly the plat­form, it is the on­ly po­lit­i­cal par­ty that I see my­self as a youth hav­ing a fu­ture in this coun­try," he said.Oth­er po­lit­i­cal plat­forms were un­sta­ble and the av­er­age politi­cian in the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment has no plan, he said.Cam­paign­ing is ex­pect­ed to kick off by next week.

Farm­ers dis­re­spect­ed

Singh hopes that his pas­sion for agri­cul­ture will tran­scend on the po­lit­i­cal land­scape.He said, "We need to di­ver­si­fy. We need to get in­volved in oth­er as­pects of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of our coun­try."He spoke to the Sun­day Guardian at the head­quar­ters of the Sec­tion 34 Group, Beau­car­ro Road, Freeport on Fri­day.

Singh is a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. He has a BSc in agri­cul­tur­al sci­ence and en­vi­ron­men­tal nat­ur­al re­source man­age­ment. He shared his ex­per­tise about rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing agri­cul­ture in the Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy and his po­lit­i­cal plans.He said farm­ers in T&T were dis­re­spect­ed and ne­glect­ed when com­pared to oth­er coun­tries.He said, "While grow­ing up I was al­ways in­volved in the op­er­a­tions of the farm, hence my pas­sion for agri­cul­ture.

"I'm al­ways in the field look­ing on, tak­ing part and ask­ing ques­tions about bring­ing food from a mere seed."Singh said a ma­jor con­cern for him was to see the day when the na­tion be­comes self-suf­fi­cient.He hopes to use agri­cul­ture as a step­ping stone to en­gage young peo­ple to be­come more re­spon­si­ble."Agri­cul­ture has showed me that it is an al­ter­na­tive; a move away from crime," he said.

A vote for hope

All he is ask­ing the elec­torate for is a chance to serve.He said, "I am young. I am dy­nam­ic. I am there to take all ad­vice from my el­ders, re­spect all in so­ci­ety and learn from the pub­lic."Give me that chance to serve. Give me that chance to rep­re­sent. Give me that chance to make my mark in the na­tion's his­to­ry, and if I fall short, then judge me."He said a vote for him was a vote for hope; a vote for re­spect and com­mit­tent to a dy­ing in­dus­try that is agri­cul­ture.

He said he hopes to bring his suc­cess sto­ry as a farmer and busi­ness­man to the young peo­ple of the coun­try to take up a more ac­tive role in the pol­i­tics and de­ci­sion-mak­ing process.Singh said, "In the past we have not seen an ac­tive in­volve­ment of youths and young pro­fes­sion­als stand­ing up and be­ing re­spon­si­ble. They are the fu­ture.

"It starts from the el­e­men­tary lev­el and as a youth, I will like to stress that if I can come out of my nor­mal life and pro­fes­sion and put for­ward my vi­sion it will en­cour­age oth­ers to take con­trol of their fu­ture."