Two agri­cul­ture stake­hold­ers are urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to fol­low through on ef­forts to sta­bilise and sub­se­quent­ly im­prove the out­put of lo­cal farm­ers.

In a re­cent meet­ing with farm­ers in the St Au­gus­tine con­stituen­cy, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Ravi Rati­ram, not­ed there had been a huge drop-off in the agri­cul­ture’s con­tri­bu­tion to T&T’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) over the last decade.

He said agri­cul­ture’s con­tri­bu­tion to the coun­try’s GDP had de­clined by over $200 mil­lion in the past decade.

Agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist Dr Omar­dath Ma­haraj told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the sec­tor had seen much fluc­tu­a­tion, with the trend of­ten more neg­a­tive than pos­i­tive in the past decade. Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice, Agri­cul­ture, Forestry and Fish­ing’s con­tri­bu­tion to GDP hit a peak of $1.75 bil­lion in 2017, but dropped by $196 mil­lion in 2018 ($1.55 bil­lion) and a fur­ther $346 mil­lion in 2019 ($1.21 bil­lion) be­fore ris­ing to 1.49 bil­lion in 2020. The con­tri­bu­tion has con­sis­tent­ly de­clined since then.

Ma­haraj said, “Al­though the 2023 val­ue (1.41 bil­lion) is slight­ly high­er than the 2013 fig­ure of $ 1.31 bil­lion, the in­crease of $105.9 mil­lion over ten years is mod­est and does not ac­count for the ef­fect of in­fla­tion. In re­al terms, the sec­tor’s rel­a­tive con­tri­bu­tion to the na­tion­al econ­o­my has con­tract­ed.”

“De­spite na­tion­al pol­i­cy in­ter­est in food se­cu­ri­ty and rur­al de­vel­op­ment, agri­cul­ture’s share of GDP has re­mained con­sis­tent­ly be­low 1 per cent, sug­gest­ing that pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, scale, and val­ue ad­di­tion re­main lim­it­ed. Fac­tors con­tribut­ing to this de­cline like­ly in­clude cli­mate vari­abil­i­ty, low tech­no­log­i­cal adop­tion, ag­ing farmer pop­u­la­tions, and in­ad­e­quate sup­port in­fra­struc­ture, all of which have un­der­mined the sec­tor’s com­pet­i­tive­ness.”

This, he said, con­trast­ed to what was seen in the food man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try, which had grown in strength dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

How­ev­er, he ex­plained that this in­dus­try had been sub­ject to geopo­lit­i­cal strains which could neg­a­tive­ly off­set its mo­men­tum.

Ma­haraj said, “In con­trast, the food man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try, specif­i­cal­ly the sub-sec­tor cov­er­ing food, bev­er­ages and to­bac­co prod­ucts, has shown stronger rel­a­tive per­for­mance. This sec­tor con­tin­ues to con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to non-en­er­gy GDP, dri­ven by ro­bust do­mes­tic de­mand, ex­port po­ten­tial, and con­sumer pref­er­ence for processed and pack­aged foods.

“How­ev­er, this growth has come with in­creased de­pen­dence on im­port­ed in­ter­me­di­ate goods, such as fruit pulps, flavour­ings, preser­v­a­tives, and pack­ag­ing ma­te­ri­als. Lo­cal agri­cul­ture has not suf­fi­cient­ly met the in­put needs of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, cre­at­ing a dis­con­nect be­tween pri­ma­ry pro­duc­tion and down­stream pro­cess­ing. As a re­sult, food man­u­fac­tur­ers re­ly heav­i­ly on for­eign sup­ply chains, mak­ing the in­dus­try vul­ner­a­ble to ex­change rate fluc­tu­a­tions, ship­ping de­lays, and glob­al com­mod­i­ty shocks.”

Dr Ma­haraj said that on the new ad­min­is­tra­tion’s elec­tion in­to of­fice, he not­ed he al­ways ad­vo­cat­ed for “in­clu­sive pol­i­cy plan­ning and ac­tion in T&T,” as he point­ed out there are is­sues in both sec­tors that need to be ad­dressed.

“Though not privy to the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es, it re­mains that more must be done for agri­cul­tur­al and coastal com­mu­ni­ties, but it can on­ly start through greater con­sul­ta­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion and co­or­di­na­tion. This would have al­lowed us to ex­plore the rel­a­tive­ly lim­it­ed liveli­hood port­fo­lio avail­able to those of us who are at-risk or vul­ner­a­ble, dis­sect and plan strate­gic in­ter­ven­tions to deal with the peren­ni­al is­sues which con­front­ed the sec­tor long be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and un­til now with a chang­ing geo-po­lit­i­cal eco-sys­tem and con­strained econ­o­my, plan a lo­cal sup­ply chain for food pro­cess­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing with­out com­pro­mis­ing food avail­able for di­rect hu­man con­sump­tion among oth­er pol­i­cy goals,’ he said.

The agri­cul­ture min­is­ter, while ad­dress­ing farm­ers at the meet­ing, al­so high­light­ed that there had been an in­crease in the food im­port bill dur­ing this pe­ri­od. How­ev­er, Ma­haraj stat­ed that the in­crease in that bill was not sim­ply tied to re­duced pro­duc­tion but to sev­er­al oth­er and of­ten ex­ter­nal fac­tors.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the da­ta shows that we re­main hard-pressed to re­port an ex­pan­sion in food pro­duc­tion at a na­tion­al lev­el over the last 10 years, much less for any per­ma­nent and strate­gic dis­place­ment of im­port de­pen­den­cy, though some ef­forts were start­ed with rice,” he said.

“Food im­ports must be un­der­stood in re­la­tion to es­sen­tial prod­ucts which sim­ply can­not be pro­duced lo­cal­ly, sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­me­di­ary prod­ucts and con­cen­trates which ser­vice the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and do cre­ate thou­sands of jobs in the val­ue chain, food and bev­er­ages for the “high-end” con­sumer and restau­rant mar­ket, and the in­flux of pri­ma­ry agri­cul­tur­al com­modi­ties and prod­ucts that di­rect­ly com­pete with lo­cal farm­ers, fish­ers, and en­tre­pre­neurs.”

He stressed, “The lat­ter be­ing the most dis­cour­ag­ing to lo­cal­ly-dri­ven in­vest­ments.”

Ma­haraj said the coun­try’s food pro­duc­tion re­mains large­ly mis­un­der­stood, and man­ag­ing the coun­try’s food sup­ply was not an easy task. The agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist not­ed there had been a se­ries of un­der­cooked or failed poli­cies which has not helped the sec­tor push up­ward.

“Pol­i­cy in­cludes iden­ti­fy­ing strate­gic pro­grammes and projects aligned to mea­sur­able out­comes and the re­quired fi­nan­cial, hu­man and tech­ni­cal re­sources,’ said Ma­haraj, “The ob­served de­cline in agri­cul­ture’s GDP con­tri­bu­tion over the past decade, cou­pled with man­u­fac­tur­ing’s re­liance on im­port­ed raw ma­te­ri­als, high­lights a missed op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­te­grate lo­cal pro­duc­tion with val­ue-added pro­cess­ing. Strength­en­ing this link­age could en­hance eco­nom­ic re­silience, re­duce the im­port bill, and cre­ate sus­tain­able rur­al em­ploy­ment. Ad­dress­ing the im­bal­ance be­tween lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al out­put and man­u­fac­tur­ing in­put de­mand is there­fore es­sen­tial for a more self-re­liant and ro­bust agri-food sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The St Au­gus­tine farm­ers meet­ing al­so served as the first step in dis­cus­sions in­volv­ing farm­ers con­cern­ing the ‘Stand Your Ground’ leg­is­la­tion.

Di­rec­tor of the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T (ASTT), Don­ny Rogers, praised the move to in­volve farm­ers in the dis­cus­sion as he not­ed a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in crime and vi­o­lence against farm­ers, which in some cas­es has made farm­ers cash out and leave the food pro­duc­tion sec­tor out­right.

“Aranguez has moved from the bread­bas­ket of the na­tion to be­come one of the com­mer­cial cap­i­tals of the na­tion, be­cause you have farm­ers who have been at­tacked, but at the same time, the land­scape has said you can get $6 mil­lion for your acre that you’re plant­i­ng on. So why would a man risk his life and his fam­i­ly’s in­come? In a sit­u­a­tion like that is it makes you sell your land. So pro­tect­ing farm­ers would not just en­sure that pro­duc­tion con­tin­ues. It works to so­lid­i­fy con­tin­u­al pro­duc­tion,” said Rogers, who praised the Gov­ern­ment for in­clud­ing farm­ers in the dis­course. He said this served as a promis­ing giv­en agri­cul­ture had been a ma­jor part of the gov­ern­ment’s elec­tion cam­paign­ing.

Dr Ma­haraj too agreed giv­en crime con­cerns farm­ers need­ed to be in­clud­ed in the dis­cus­sion as did fish­er­men.