Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

The Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry will for the first time be par­tic­i­pat­ing in this year's Trade In­vest­ment Fo­rum (TIC). Its fo­cus will be on at­tract­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to in­vest in ag­i­cul­ture. The theme: In­vest in Agri­cul­ture Now-Join the Agri­cul­ture Rev­o­lu­tion. The TIC takes place from May 16 to 18 at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain. In­ter­viewed last Fri­day at the launch of TIC's six large pavil­ions at the Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's, Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said, "We want to get our busi­ness peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in un­der­stand­ing that they don't need to know about farm­ing to be in­volved in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor." He said agri­cul­ture needs busi­ness own­ers who could bring the tech­nol­o­gy and cap­i­tal in­vest­ments. The idea is to take agri­cul­ture from the ground and turn it in­to a busi­ness.

He ex­plained that par­tic­i­pat­ing in TIC is a strate­gic ap­proach to seize the op­por­tu­ni­ty and en­cour­age the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to in­vest. Bharath said the min­istry plans on hav­ing the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in­vest ini­tial­ly in key crops-co­coa, co­conuts, pineap­ple and hon­ey-that could cre­ate niche mar­kets. "In or­der to meet our tar­gets, I want them to in­vest along the val­ue chain from pri­ma­ry pro­duc­tion to pro­cess­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion mar­ket­ing and re­tail trade." "We need to have en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­its in the sec­tor, peo­ple who would look at agri­cul­ture as a busi­ness." Vas­ant said the biggest con­cern is farm­ers pro­duc­ing more than they have mar­kets for. He said busi­nesss have sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als to lease 4m233 acres of land. In­sti­tu­tions that fall un­der the purview of Food Pro­duc­tion, like Na­tion­al Agr­ri­cul­ture Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co), is charged with en­sur­ing there is suf­fi­cient stor­age ca­pac­i­ty to hold sur­plus goods, he said.