Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing to use cas­sa­va for the fer­men­ta­tion of lo­cal beer, rather than us­ing the flower of the hop plant which is im­port­ed in large quan­ti­ties for T&T brew­eries.

So said Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj as he opened the Brick­field Pack­ing House at Tabaquite yes­ter­day.

The new fa­cil­i­ty pro­vides a place for farm­ers to sort, size, la­bel, clean, wax and pack­age their pro­duce. Equipped with chillers, freez­ers and train­ing rooms, the Pack­ing House is one of two opened this year by gov­ern­ment, Ma­haraj said.

He ex­plained that gov­ern­ment re­mains com­mit­ted to low­er­ing the food im­port bill and this is why dis­cus­sions are be­ing held with Carib Brew­ery and Na­tion­al Flour Mills to use lo­cal pro­duce in the man­fac­tur­ing process.

Say­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions are still in the em­bry­on­ic stage, Ma­haraj said tests will be done to de­ter­mine whether cas­sa­va could be used as part of the fer­men­ta­tion process. Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co) Ganesh Gan­gaper­sad said cas­sa­va fer­men­ta­tion has been tried and test­ed in the African con­ti­nent.

Mean­while Works Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan said over the past few years the gov­ern­ment has paved hun­dreds of kilo­me­tres of agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads.

He said bridges and cul­verts were fixed to make life eas­i­er for the farm­ers. Ram­bachan de­nied that gov­ern­ment had spent over $400 bil­lion since it as­sumed of­fice. He ex­plained that earn­ings were $268 bil­lion and ex­pen­di­ture was $291 bil­lion, leav­ing a deficit of $23 mil­lion.

"For those who have eyes to see, it is clear to see that we got val­ue for the mon­ey spent," Ma­haraj said, adding that 46 health cen­tres have been opened and hun­dreds of nurs­es were be­ing trained at the El Do­ra­do Nurs­ing Acad­e­my and the Col­lege of Sci­ence Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T.

How­ev­er, pres­i­dent of the Table­land Pineap­ple Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Ramesh Ram­sumair said de­spite the con­struc­tion of the pack­ing house, not enough is be­ing done to sup­port the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

He added that farm­ers were still hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time cul­ti­vat­ing and pro­cess­ing pro­duce be­cause the agri­cul­tur­al data­base was in sham­bles.

"The first thing we have to do is build a data­base so we know what we have and what we should have. Right now we don't know who pro­duces what, when they pro­duce and in what quan­ti­ties," Ram­sumair said.

He added, "We wel­come this pack­ing house but this fa­cil­i­tates the end prod­uct and we need to get goods and ser­vices to come here. Farm­ers need to pro­duce and we need prop­er in­fra­struc­ture to help us ac­com­plish this."

Ram­sumair al­so said farm­ers have been beg­ging to meet with Ma­haraj for the past three years to dis­cuss agri­cul­tur­al con­cerns at the La Glo­ria Es­tate but this nev­er ma­te­ri­alised.

Say­ing the gov­ern­ment's agri­cul­tur­al plan 2012 to 2015 had failed, Ram­sumair ex­plained: "We are run­ning around like head­less chick­ens. At this point we build­ing a pack­ing house and en­cour­ag­ing lo­cal food con­sump­tion, but we not putting things in place to help farm­ers to grow this food."

He said the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of TT was de­prived of $5 mil­lion in fund­ing while hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars were be­ing in­vest­ed else­where.