The Food Im­port Bill

The cost of im­port­ing food in­to T&T has in­creased dra­mat­i­cal­ly in re­cent years. In 2024, it was es­ti­mat­ed at over $7.3 bil­lion. This sum il­lus­trates the na­tion’s heavy re­liance on food im­ports to meet its do­mes­tic de­mands, which have grown over time from an av­er­age of about $5 bil­lion in the past. Due to poor soils, in­suf­fi­cient in­fra­struc­ture, re­strict­ed ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy, cli­mate vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, and low in­vest­ment, agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is con­strained in many de­vel­op­ing na­tions, in­clud­ing T&T.

The food needs of ex­pand­ing pop­u­la­tions or shift­ing di­etary pref­er­ences are fre­quent­ly be­yond the scope of do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion, es­pe­cial­ly due to chang­ing tastes and pref­er­ences of lo­cal con­sumers. Food de­mand has in­creased be­yond lo­cal pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty for some com­modi­ties due to rapid pop­u­la­tion growth and ur­ban mi­gra­tion, ne­ces­si­tat­ing im­ports.

Do­mes­tic pro­duc­tion sys­tems are not al­ways able to meet the var­ied, processed, or non-lo­cal food de­mands of these mod­ern con­sumers. Di­etary habits have changed to­ward more meat, dairy, processed foods, and im­port­ed lux­u­ry goods as wages rose. In or­der to meet the grow­ing and var­ied de­mands of con­sumers, eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment lo­cal­ly will in­crease pur­chas­ing pow­er, which in turn can re­sult in in­creased food im­port vol­umes.

Re­liance on im­ports re­sult from crop cy­cles and food sup­plies be­ing dis­rupt­ed by droughts, floods, pests and oth­er nat­ur­al shocks. The fragili­ty of agri­cul­ture is made worse by dras­tic cli­mate changes. Im­ports be­come more af­ford­able and avail­able when trade bar­ri­ers are low­ered and in­ter­na­tion­al trade agree­ments are par­tic­i­pat­ed in. In or­der to main­tain sup­ply and price sta­bil­i­ty, sev­er­al na­tions im­port es­sen­tial foods and com­modi­ties. Be­cause of sub­si­dies, economies of scale, and ef­fec­tive sup­ply chains in ex­port­ing na­tions, im­port­ed foods may oc­ca­sion­al­ly be more af­ford­able or con­sis­tent­ly avail­able than lo­cal­ly pro­duced equiv­a­lents. Pro­duc­tion short­falls re­sult from the gov­ern­ment’s lim­it­ed sup­port of do­mes­tic agri­cul­ture, which in­cludes low in­vest­ment and in­ad­e­quate rur­al in­fra­struc­ture.

- High food im­port de­pen­den­cy: Up to 85 per cent (on se­lect­ed com­modi­ties) of the na­tion’s food and bev­er­age de­mands are met by im­ports, mak­ing it a high­ly de­pen­dent na­tion. This makes one more sus­cep­ti­ble to sup­ply chain in­ter­rup­tions, for­eign ex­change stress and world­wide price swings.

- Re­strict­ed nat­ur­al re­sources and agri­cul­tur­al land: T&T, a small Is­land de­vel­op­ing state (SIDS), has some nat­ur­al re­sources and avail­able arable land, which lends to the growth of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, but is still con­strained by sev­er­al con­found­ing fac­tors;

- Cli­mate change and en­vi­ron­men­tal risks: Crop pro­duc­tion and an­i­mal farm­ing are at risk due to an in­crease in floods, droughts, high tem­per­a­tures and sea lev­el rise, which makes cli­mate-re­silient tech­niques even more im­por­tant;

- De­clin­ing agri­cul­tur­al work­force and pro­duc­tion: Due to ur­ban mi­gra­tion and low­er youth in­volve­ment, the agri­cul­tur­al labour force is get­ting less ac­ces­si­ble and the com­mod­i­ty pro­duc­tion val­ue per hectare is de­clin­ing;

- Low pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and mar­ket chal­lenges: Farm­ers deal with prob­lems like er­rat­ic sup­ply, a dis­or­gan­ised mar­ket, ex­pen­sive pro­duc­tion, re­strict­ed ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy and a short­age of post-har­vest fa­cil­i­ties;

- Nu­tri­tion and health is­sues: The grow­ing preva­lence of chron­ic dis­eases linked to poor nu­tri­tion em­pha­sis­es how crit­i­cal it is to raise the qual­i­ty of do­mes­tic food and pro­mote whole­some, lo­cal­ly pro­duced goods;.

- In­sti­tu­tion­al weak­ness­es and in­fra­struc­ture gaps: Val­ue ad­di­tion is con­strained and in­dus­try ex­pan­sion is slowed down by in­ad­e­quate pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties, lo­gis­tics, fund­ing, and ex­ten­sion ser­vices.

- Frag­ment­ed small­hold­er farms: A large num­ber of farm­ers run re­mote, small-scale farms that re­strict their abil­i­ty to com­pete and take ad­van­tage of economies of scale.

- Pol­i­cy and sup­port re­stric­tions: De­spite re­cent gov­ern­ment ef­forts to re­vi­talise and di­ver­si­fy the in­dus­try, agri­cul­ture has his­tor­i­cal­ly re­ceived less at­ten­tion and fund­ing than oth­er in­dus­tries.

Com­mon types of agri­cul­ture

Root and tu­ber crops like cas­sa­va, sweet pota­toes, yams, dasheen, and ed­does are among the com­mon food crops farmed.

Lo­cal herbs like shadon beni are among the veg­eta­bles farmed, along with toma­toes, sweet pep­pers, pak choi, let­tuce and cu­cum­bers.

Fruit crops like paw­paw and pineap­ple are al­so grown.

Plan­ta­tion crops are es­sen­tial; co­coa, along with cof­fee and cit­rus, was a tra­di­tion­al and cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant ex­port crop.

With its im­proved yields and year-round sup­ply, pro­tect­ed agri­cul­ture—which in­cludes green­hous­es and shade hous­es—is be­com­ing more and more pop­u­lar for grow­ing veg­eta­bles.

Con­sists of rais­ing cat­tle for meat and dairy, pigs, small ru­mi­nants like sheep and goats, and poul­try (broil­ers, lay­ers,ducks).

Live­stock con­tributes to lo­cal food se­cu­ri­ty by pro­duc­ing meat, milk, eggs, and oth­er goods.

As­so­ci­at­ed with pri­ma­ry agri­cul­ture, the pro­duc­tion of co­coa, root crops, fruits, veg­eta­bles, poul­try, and oth­er goods for both do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Rur­al em­ploy­ment and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion are fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the agro-in­dus­try.

- Food pro­duc­tion is sup­ple­ment­ed by grow­ing aqua­cul­ture op­er­a­tions and small-scale fish­ing.

- Sources of pro­tein come from both farmed fish and wild cap­ture fish­eries.

De­spite mak­ing for less than 2 per cent of the coun­try’s GDP, agri­cul­ture sup­ports rur­al pop­u­la­tions in par­tic­u­lar and ac­counts for 5 per cent of all jobs. Eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion away from the hege­mon­ic oil and gas sec­tors de­pends on this in­dus­try. It gen­er­ates long-term, sus­tain­able job pos­si­bil­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly for rur­al and small­hold­er farm­ers. Through the pro­duc­tion of sta­ple crops like rice, sweet pota­toes, cas­sa­va, and dasheen, agri­cul­ture sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributes to in­creased na­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty. The gov­ern­ment’s first pri­or­i­ty is to in­crease lo­cal food pro­duc­tion in or­der to low­er the high food im­port cost, which is rough­ly $7.3 bil­lion.

A sig­nif­i­cant source of in­come in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, agri­cul­ture al­so pro­motes eco­nom­ic growth in these re­gions. Rur­al pover­ty can be de­creased and in­come lev­els raised by sup­port­ing farm­ing op­er­a­tions. Her­itage val­ue is at­tached to the pro­duc­tion of crops that are cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant, such as choco­late and spe­cial­ty pep­pers. The in­dus­try adds to T&T’s culi­nary and cul­tur­al va­ri­ety. Agri­cul­ture-re­lat­ed agro-pro­cess­ing busi­ness­es en­hance raw ma­te­ri­als’ val­ue and gen­er­ate rev­enue. Com­modi­ties like spices, spe­cial­ty fruits, and pre­mi­um co­coa have the po­ten­tial to be ex­port­ed.

Loan pro­grammes and fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance

- For farm­ers and agribusi­ness­es, the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB) of­fers cus­tomised loans, sav­ings plans, and fi­nan­cial ser­vices.

- To en­cour­age the use of new meth­ods, tools, and tech­nol­o­gy, the Agri­cul­tur­al Fi­nance Sup­port Pro­gram pro­vides grants and sub­si­dies.

- Farm starts and ex­pan­sions can ap­ply for small busi­ness fi­nanc­ing from the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NED­CO).

Ex­ten­sion ser­vices and tech­ni­cal sup­port

- Farm­ers can re­ceive tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance, ad­vice, and train­ing through ex­ten­sion ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land, and Fish­eries.

- As­sis­tance in­cludes pest and dis­ease man­age­ment, cli­mate-smart agri­cul­ture prac­tices, post-har­vest tech­nol­o­gy, and mar­ket in­for­ma­tion.

Re­search and orig­i­nal­i­ty

- Part­ner­ships with in­sti­tu­tions like the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies fa­cil­i­tate agri­cul­tur­al re­search and in­for­ma­tion ex­change.

- Pro­mo­tion of mod­ern agri­cul­tur­al tech­nolo­gies for pro­tect­ed agri­cul­ture, such as green­hous­es and hy­dro­pon­ics

Con­clu­sion

Eco­nom­ic growth, pover­ty re­duc­tion, food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty, en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and so­cial in­clu­sion all de­pend on sup­port­ing agri­cul­ture in emerg­ing na­tions like T&T. It is es­sen­tial to tack­ling glob­al is­sues like hunger and cli­mate change as well as cre­at­ing ro­bust rur­al economies. Mil­lions of peo­ple are lift­ed out of pover­ty and rich, sta­ble so­ci­eties are fos­tered by con­sis­tent, well-co­or­di­nat­ed agri­cul­tur­al in­vest­ments and poli­cies that have ad­van­tages that go far be­yond the farm gate.

Riyadh Mo­hammed (LLM, MBA, MSC, BSC, DIP) is the lead agri­cul­ture con­sul­tant Trop­i­cal Agri­cul­ture Con­sul­tan­cy Ser­vices. He can be con­tact­ed at riyadhmo­hammed07@gmail.com

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