Shal­iza?Has­sanali

Nine large in­vestors have been giv­en the all-clear by the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion to cul­ti­vate 2,700 acres of state lands across the coun­try. The move is ex­pect­ed to help re­duce the coun­try's food im­port bill from $4 bil­lion to $2 bil­lion, a tar­get set by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai for 2015.

In de­liv­er­ing the 2012/2013 bud­get, Howai stressed that achiev­ing food se­cu­ri­ty was a top pri­or­i­ty for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. Howai not­ed with con­cern that an in­crease in im­port­ed food has had a neg­a­tive im­pact, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the most vul­ner­a­ble as they sought to man­age the busi­ness of their every­day lives.

Howai said the Fi­nance Min­istry, through a com­pet­i­tive process, was ac­tive­ly dis­trib­ut­ing to the na­tion­al farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty stan­dard leas­es for small and large farms. Speak­ing at the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion of­fice in St Clair last Thurs­day, Nigel Grimes, co-or­di­na­tor/ad­vis­er of the com­mer­cial large farms pro­gramme, said the role of the large farms will not be the so­lu­tion to our food pro­duc­tion is­sues.

He said, "I don't want peo­ple to have the per­cep­tion that the large farms is the so­lu­tion to our food pro­duc­tion is­sues. The large farms will deal with is­sues of im­port sub­sti­tu­tion and to get vol­ume and qual­i­ty that is re­quired for agro-pro­cess­ing. There is a role for the large farms."

The farms, Grimes point­ed out, will al­so help T&T ob­tain food se­cu­ri­ty and bring re­turns for tax­pay­ers. He made it clear that farm­ing is not a fast-re­turn busi­ness, but one that in­volved risks. In­sist­ing that the farms will as­sist in slash­ing the food im­port bill, Grimes, who is charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of en­sur­ing the farms reach their op­ti­mum po­ten­tial, said the min­istry was mov­ing apace to get the projects off the ground.

An agron­o­mist, Grimes be­lieves that by 2013 all nine in­vestors would have ac­quired the nec­es­sary ap­provals such as cer­tifi­cates of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and per­mis­sion from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion and Fire Ser­vices.

"One of the ma­jor bug­bears with the pro­gramme is that you have to en­sure that the farms ob­tain all the nec­es­sary ap­provals. There is an ap­proval gap. What we have done was give farm­ers pro­vi­sion­al leas­es to ac­cel­er­ate pro­duc­tion." The in­vestors' leas­es will be for­malised by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

Last No­vem­ber, the min­istry sent out a re­quest for pro­pos­al of the leas­ing of com­mer­cial­farms in Trinidad for agri­cul­tur­al in­vest­ment, de­vel­op­ment, man­age­ment and op­er­a­tion on eight state sites. The farms at Or­ange Grove, Be­ju­cal, Fe­lic­i­ty, La Glo­ria, Pic­ton, Mo­ra Val­ley and Tuck­er Val­ley will be pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture such as agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads, elec­tric­i­ty and drainage by the State.

Among the crops iden­ti­fied for large scale pro­duc­tion in the next 18 months are rice, live­stock pro­duc­tion, veg­eta­bles, root crops, fruit crops, plan­tain, pump­kin, wa­ter­mel­on, pa­paya, aqua­cul­ture, hot pep­pers and sea­son­ing pep­pers, cas­sa­va, co­conuts, ba­nana, Amer­i­can slicer toma­toes, gua­va, or­ange, man­go, pas­sion fruit, onion, car­rots, green string beans, can­taloupe, sweet corn and dwarf bo­di.

The in­vestors, all of whom are T&T na­tion­als, had the op­tion of form­ing joint ven­tures, part­ner­ships or oth­er le­gal arrange­ments. The cur­rent pol­i­cy arrange­ment al­lows the in­vestor a 30-year com­mer­cial agri­cul­ture lease which can be ex­tend­ed for sim­i­lar pe­ri­ods as long as the land is utilised for the pur­pose it was grant­ed and the lease pay­ments are made.

Sur­plus to be ex­port­ed

The an­nu­al rental lease pay­ment is $500 per acre. Grimes said the State will have lit­tle or no cost in get­ting the farms up and run­ning as ex­pens­es in ma­chin­ery, chem­i­cals, fer­tilis­ers and seedlings must be borne by the in­vestor. He said the in­vestors will use sci­en­tif­ic tech­nol­o­gy, pro­mote sus­tain­abil­i­ty and not com­pete with the small farms. Crops that are grown on the land will be sold to Namde­v­co with its sur­plus be­ing ex­port­ed.

In 2008, Tuck­er Val­ley Farm in Ch­aguara­mas was fi­nanced, op­er­at­ed and man­aged as a mod­el com­mer­cial farm by the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty. Mil­lions was spent on the 100-acre farm, but cit­i­zens did not reap any ben­e­fits. To­day, the farm, which was re­as­signed to the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion by Cab­i­net in 2010, has been used as a pi­lot project for onions which were sold to busi­ness­es in the fast food in­dus­try and su­per­mar­kets.

The min­istry al­so in­ter­vened to ac­cel­er­ate the com­mis­sion­ing of the Ever­green Ranch Ltd, Two Broth­ers Farms in War­renville, Ed­in­burgh Farms and Tech­nol­o­gy Farms in Or­ange Grove in the last few months. The Ed­in­burgh Farm is a ven­ture be­tween Caribbean Chem­i­cals, Five Star Farms and the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion. Tech­nolo­gies Farms in Or­ange Grove, owned by Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj (ADM Dis­trib­u­tors) and the T&T Agri-Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, has a li­cence to op­er­ate.

52 land in­vestors

Grimes said the pro­gramme aims to have 15 farms that will achieve an in­crease in do­mes­tic agri­cul­tur­al out­put through lo­cal and for­eign en­tre­pre­neur­ship, em­ploy­ing state-of–the-art tech­nolo­gies. Fol­low­ing the pro­pos­al of the new sites, Grimes said 52 in­vestors ap­plied for use of the ad­ver­tised lands, which ranged from 44 to 241 acres.

The list was eval­u­at­ed and then short list­ed to nine in­vestors who were deemed to be fi­nan­cial­ly sta­ble and could ef­fec­tive­ly man­age the farms on their own. The first pro­pos­al for in­vestors in 2007 was is­sued un­der the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and at­tract­ed peo­ple lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

How­ev­er, the sec­ond pro­pos­al fo­cused on­ly on lo­cal in­vestors. Pic­ton in south Trinidad has over 1,200 acres with five large farms. The largest farm is 267 acres. A large farm can range be­tween 50 to 300 acres. With 12 large farms lo­cat­ed on eight sites across the coun­try, Grimes said the coun­try will see an in­crease in a num­ber of crops.

The aim of the farm, Grimes said, is to grow com­modi­ties that are not tra­di­tion­al­ly cul­ti­vat­ed in T&T for pro­cess­ing and to cre­ate val­ue-added prod­ucts. For the sec­tor to thrive, "we must be open to recog­nis­ing agri­cul­ture as a busi­ness." By 2015, Grimes said, T&T must be able to pro­duce 20,000 tonnes of processed rice an­nu­al­ly.

In the last four months, over 400 acres of rice were cul­ti­vat­ed in Plum Mi­tan, as Gov­ern­ment moves to re­vamp the sec­tor which plum­met­ed over the years. "This will sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the 33,000 tonnes of rice we im­port and con­sume an­nu­al­ly." Grime said they al­so want to cut back on wheat im­ports by 40 per cent, us­ing cas­sa­va flour and root crops sub­sti­tutes in­stead.

Be­yond 2015, Grimes said, rice should be elim­i­nat­ed from the im­port list. He be­lieves the farms will ease the bur­den on the con­sumers' pock­ets in the com­ing months. Asked if cer­tain crops will be put on the neg­a­tive list when the farms reach pro­duc­tion tar­gets, Grimes said, "That is a mat­ter we will be en­gag­ing the Min­istry of Trade and Food Pro­duc­tion and our min­istry once we reach the lev­els of pro­duc­tion."