An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

As an­tic­i­pa­tion builds ahead of the na­tion­al bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion ex­pect­ed in ear­ly Oc­to­ber, stake­hold­ers in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly those from the poul­try and live­stock in­dus­tries, are call­ing for deep­er in­vest­ment, up­dat­ed in­cen­tives and a long-over­due shift in ap­proach to how farm­ing is sup­port­ed.

From the ris­ing cost of pro­duc­tion to the struc­tur­al in­ef­fi­cien­cies that frus­trate even the most ex­pe­ri­enced grow­ers, voic­es from across the in­dus­try are de­mand­ing that 2026 Bud­get move be­yond lip ser­vice and in­to con­crete, trans­for­ma­tive ac­tion.

The agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor re­ceived a bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion of $1.184 bil­lion for the 2025 fis­cal year.

Speak­ing with Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian last Fri­day, Sudesh Ramkissoon, pres­i­dent of the Broil­er Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, out­lined a de­tailed and point­ed wish list for the up­com­ing bud­get, fo­cussing pri­mar­i­ly on the ur­gent need to re­align agri­cul­tur­al in­cen­tives with the cur­rent eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties.

“The Broil­er Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion would like to see a re­vamp in our farm­ers’ in­cen­tive pro­grammes to re­flect the true cost of do­ing busi­ness in 2025 and 2026,” Ramkissoon said.

While pre­vi­ous in­cen­tives have played a role in sup­port­ing the in­dus­try, Ramkissoon not­ed that much of what ex­ists to­day is out­dat­ed and dis­con­nect­ed from the re­al ex­pens­es in­volved in mod­ern poul­try farm­ing.

“Cost to build pens is much more ex­pen­sive. The cost of equip­ment is al­so much high­er,” he ex­plained. “They can’t ex­pect us in 2025 to still be putting in man­u­al heat­ing sys­tems when we are try­ing to move for­ward and in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy.”

When asked what it ac­tu­al­ly costs to set up a vi­able broil­er op­er­a­tion?

“To build a poul­try pen to house 10,000 birds, you’re look­ing at around 15,000 square feet of space. From ground to gal­vanise, you’ll spend about $200,000, and if you go au­to­mat­ed, the equip­ment alone will run you an­oth­er $150,000,” said Ramkissoon. “So you’re talk­ing about $300,000 to $350,000 eas­i­ly.”

The cur­rent Gov­ern­ment in­cen­tive for poul­try pen con­struc­tion, ac­cord­ing to Ramkissoon, is based on ear­ly 2000s fig­ures and stands at around $50,000 per pen, a fig­ure that does lit­tle to tru­ly in­cen­tivise new en­trants or mod­erni­sa­tion.

“That’s not enough to get some­one mo­ti­vat­ed or in­vest­ed,” he said. “This is one of the rea­sons we see most­ly old­er farm­ers still in the busi­ness. They made their cap­i­tal in­vest­ments years ago, back when it was af­ford­able.”

Ramkissoon point­ed to the gold stan­dard in broil­er farm­ing to­day, tun­nel-ven­ti­lat­ed sys­tems, which en­sure op­ti­mal bird health, im­proved feed con­ver­sion, and con­trolled grow­ing en­vi­ron­ments, es­pe­cial­ly cru­cial amid in­creas­ing cli­mate volatil­i­ty.

“A tun­nel-ven­ti­lat­ed farm to­day will cost you about $1.5 mil­lion,” he added. “That’s the mod­ern way. But when your end prod­uct pric­ing doesn’t al­low for mean­ing­ful re­turns, up­grad­ing is close to im­pos­si­ble.”

Ramkissoon al­so pressed for Gov­ern­ment-backed so­lar en­er­gy in­cen­tives tai­lored to farm­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the poul­try and live­stock sec­tors, where tem­per­a­ture con­trol is be­com­ing es­sen­tial for sur­vival.

“Cool­ing sys­tems are now cru­cial,” he said. “In cer­tain parts of the coun­try, if you don’t have fans and prop­er ven­ti­la­tion, you put your en­tire live­stock at risk.”

So­lar pow­er could re­duce op­er­a­tional costs sig­nif­i­cant­ly and help mit­i­gate some of the un­pre­dictabil­i­ty that cli­mate change is in­ject­ing in­to the farm­ing cal­en­dar. But to date, there are no spe­cif­ic gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives tar­get­ing re­new­able en­er­gy adop­tion in agri­cul­ture.

Ex­pand­ing the sec­tor

Be­yond in­di­vid­ual in­cen­tives, Ramkissoon al­so sees an op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow the lo­cal poul­try in­dus­try’s foot­print both in pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion.

“There’s a grow­ing de­mand for lo­cal chick­en. We want to see more farm­ers com­ing in­to the game,” he said. “The fast-food in­dus­try, the health-con­scious mar­ket, they all re­ly heav­i­ly on the poul­try sec­tor.”

He al­so high­light­ed the need for a na­tion­al hatch­ery to sup­port a con­sis­tent year-round sup­ply of both broil­er and lay­er birds. “That would help sta­bilise not just chick­en meat sup­ply but al­so egg pro­duc­tion,” he said.

And with tourism ex­pect­ed to rise, po­ten­tial­ly bring­ing new ho­tel chains and in­creased food de­mand, Ramkissoon be­lieves the coun­try must po­si­tion it­self now to meet that chal­lenge with home­grown so­lu­tions.

“The poul­try in­dus­try must re­main at­trac­tive to young farm­ers,” he con­clud­ed. “We need a bud­get that se­cures that fu­ture.”

While Ramkissoon ze­roes in on sec­tor-spe­cif­ic im­prove­ments, Shi­raz Khan, pres­i­dent of the T&T Farm­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, takes a broad­er and more sys­temic view. His mes­sage for the bud­get plan­ners? It’s time to get se­ri­ous.

“I don’t want any mon­ey,” Khan said em­phat­i­cal­ly. “What I want is an en­vi­ron­ment en­abling re­al sup­port sys­tems that work. I want to see prop­er ex­ten­sion ser­vices. I want to see ef­fi­cien­cy in land dis­tri­b­u­tion. I want to see re­spect for farm­ers.”

Khan’s frus­tra­tion with the sys­tem runs deep. He cit­ed long­stand­ing de­lays in land lease pro­cess­ing for many farm­ers wait­ing decades to get their le­gal ti­tles, de­spite promis­es from suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions.

“Peo­ple wait­ing 20, 30 years. Four years to reach the gen­er­al of­fice, then two years to get from there to Cab­i­net. What is that?” he asked. “How can peo­ple plan their liveli­hoods like that?”

A ques­tion of pri­or­i­ties

Khan be­lieves na­tion­al bud­get are a di­rect re­flec­tion of gov­ern­ment pri­or­i­ties and that agri­cul­ture is not yet among them.

“In the last cou­ple of bud­gets, agri­cul­ture got less than $1 bil­lion, while health got mul­ti­ples of that,” he said. “But what’s one of the biggest caus­es of poor health? Di­et. What we eat.”

He in­di­cat­ed that a mea­gre al­lo­ca­tion to agri­cul­ture leads to high­er im­por­ta­tion, low­er nu­tri­tion­al qual­i­ty, and ul­ti­mate­ly big­ger health bills. “Some­thing is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong with the con­cept,” he said.

Tack­ling im­ports, en­sur­ing food se­cu­ri­ty

Khan al­so raised the alarm over what he sees as dan­ger­ous­ly cheap meat im­ports un­der­cut­ting lo­cal pro­duc­ers.

“I did my re­search, lamb and goat be­ing sold in T&T for $18 and $20 a pound, while in the Unit­ed States lamb and goat is sell­ing US$5.99 and $8 .
That’s way be­low US mar­ket prices,” he claimed.

He warned that this dis­par­i­ty could on­ly mean one thing: “That meat is be­ing dumped. It’s stamped ‘fit for food’ in the US, but we don’t know what we’re get­ting.”

He re­called pre­vi­ous buy-lo­cal cam­paigns, which were un­der­mined by of­fi­cials with vest­ed in­ter­ests. “One Min­is­ter who sup­port­ed the cam­paign was re­moved,” Khan not­ed.

In­sti­tu­tion­al­is­ing agri­cul­tur­al em­ploy­ment

One of Khan’s biggest pro­pos­als is the in­sti­tu­tion­al­i­sa­tion of a na­tion­al Farm­ing Ap­pren­tice­ship Pro­gramme, which he refers to as FARM­PEP, a vi­sion that has been float­ed since 2007 but nev­er ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

“They have a Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) for clean­ing drains, cut­ting grass,” he said. “Why not FARM­PEP for build­ing agri­cul­tur­al skills? Let’s train peo­ple to pro­duce some­thing mean­ing­ful.”

He’s call­ing for FARM­PEP to be for­mal­ly in­clud­ed in the up­com­ing bud­get, not as a “par­ty tool,” but as a le­git­i­mate, skills-based em­ploy­ment pro­gramme to grow the agri­cul­ture sec­tor sus­tain­ably.

The Bot­tom Line

For both Ramkissoon and Khan, the cen­tral mes­sage is clear: agri­cul­ture can­not move for­ward with­out se­ri­ous, struc­tured, and mod­ern sup­port.

This means up­grad­ing cap­i­tal in­vest­ment in­cen­tives, in­tro­duc­ing re­new­able en­er­gy so­lu­tions, fix­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive bot­tle­necks, and pri­ori­tis­ing lo­cal food se­cu­ri­ty over cheap im­ports.

As the coun­try waits for Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s 2026 bud­get state­ment in Oc­to­ber, the agri­cul­ture sec­tor watch­es close­ly, hop­ing that, for once, the promis­es will match the pol­i­cy.