Shas­tri Boodan

Cit­i­zens will re­call the "hue and cry" of the then Op­po­si­tion as it raised its voice to the much ma­ligned com­mer­cial large (mega) farm pro­gramme which was ini­ti­at­ed by the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2008. This month there have been full-page ad­ver­tise­ments in the dai­ly news­pa­pers invit­ing bids from peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in com­mer­cial farm­ing, of which 17 plots were more than 50 acres while 402 plots were less than 25 acres. As the im­me­di­ate for­mer Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, it is a plea­sure to note that the min­is­ter and his Gov­ern­ment have fi­nal­ly, af­ter 17 months, lo­cat­ed the keys to the sol­id foun­da­tion of com­mer­cial farm­ing that was built to pro­vide greater food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty for the cit­i­zens of our coun­try.

The PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion set out to turn farm­ers in­to agri-busi­ness­men. The framers of the com­mer­cial farm pro­gramme en­vis­aged that com­mer­cial farms would pro­duce in greater vol­umes a range of food crops which will pro­vide raw ma­te­ri­als and feed­stock for agri-busi­ness and agro-pro­cess­ing en­tre­pre­neurs and food man­u­fac­tur­ing. The in­ten­tion was to use the agro-pro­cess­ing and agri-busi­ness­es to as­sist in the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my, while pro­vid­ing em­ploy­ment and re­duc­ing the food im­port bill. Small farms were to con­tin­ue with the pro­duc­tion of pri­ma­ry fresh food crops for sale to con­sumers at mar­kets for im­me­di­ate use.

The PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had a clear vi­sion for the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, which said: "The agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor by the year 2020 must be com­pet­i­tive and pos­sess the ca­pac­i­ty to sus­tain this com­pet­i­tive­ness by be­com­ing adap­tive, tech­nol­o­gy-fo­cused and mar­ket-dri­ven so as to cre­ate re­silience." As a con­se­quence of this plan for com­mer­cial farm op­er­a­tions, two com­mer­cial farms com­menced op­er­a­tions in late 2008: the PCS Ni­tro­gen's pri­vate-sec­tor-led mod­el and the pub­lic sec­tor gov­ern­ment-led Tuck­er Val­ley Farm with a demon­stra­tion com­po­nent. By April 2010, from the two large farm start-up op­er­a­tions, a to­tal of 423,780 kgs of pri­ma­ry crops came to mar­ket util­is­ing a mere 115 acres of the 275 acres. Av­er­age month­ly pro­duc­tion had climbed to 45,662 kgs.

Apart from these two, ap­provals and al­lo­ca­tions were grant­ed to nine more in­vestors in com­mer­cial farm­ing. This ini­tia­tive has since yield­ed five op­er­a­tional com­mer­cial farms. To­day's Gov­ern­ment, com­ing out of the heart­land of the agri­cul­tur­al belt, nev­er had a vi­sion to move the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor out of sub­sis­tence agri­cul­ture to com­mer­cial farm op­er­a­tions, nor for agri-busi­ness or agro-pro­cess­ing. And this is why, as a for­mer Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, I am pleased to see this cur­rent me­an­der­ing Gov­ern­ment fi­nal­ly em­brac­ing com­mer­cial farm­ing as the foun­da­tion up­on which the in­crease in agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion for food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty in T&T can be pur­sued.

To demon­strate this lack of vi­sion, con­sid­er for a mo­ment a quo­ta­tion in the Dai­ly Ex­press of April 13 by the Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion: "So it's-Tuck­er Val­ley com­mer­cial farm-just an ex­per­i­ment at this point in time be­cause if we get our oth­er farms up and run­ning and if we get the rest of the in­dus­try and the best of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor up and run­ning prop­er­ly, we will have an over­sup­ply of reg­u­lar food crops in Trinidad and To­ba­go." That state­ment ap­pears to speak to an ab­sence of an un­der­stand­ing of the sec­tor. Based up­on the fact that food im­ports are US$3.4 bil­lion, is­sues of over­sup­ply of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce can on­ly sur­face in T&T if three ma­jor agen­cies, name­ly, Namde­v­co, T&T Agri-Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, the Na­tion­al Di­etary Food Nu­tri­tion Com­pa­ny (school nu­tri­tion now fund­ed by the State), ab­di­cate their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in man­ag­ing the de­mand/sup­ply/util­i­ty arrange­ments of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion.

If a gov­ern­ment has the po­lit­i­cal will, lead­er­ship and vi­sion to work as­sid­u­ous­ly in pro­vid­ing the pol­i­cy frame­work to cause these agen­cies to func­tion col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly, and with co­he­sive­ness, then sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits can ac­crue to con­sumers and the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. Lit­tle com­fort for the Gov­ern­ment's vi­sion for the sec­tor can be pro­vid­ed when it is ob­served, among oth­er things, that 100 acres of the finest agri­cul­tur­al land that is present­ly the State-spon­sored Tuck­er Val­ley Large (Mega) Farm ends up on the bid block for a State lease. This can lead to a num­ber of ques­tions as cit­i­zens raise the fol­low­ing con­cerns:

• What were the mo­tives for the per­sis­tent de­mon­is­ing of the Tuck­er Val­ley (Mega) Farm ini­ti­at­ed by the PNM?

• Why was this lu­cra­tive, high­ly pro­duc­tive piece of agri­cul­tur­al re­al es­tate al­lowed to "run down" un­der the watch of this Gov­ern­ment?

• Why was there such vac­il­la­tion by this Gov­ern­ment in ad­vanc­ing the cul­ti­va­tion and pro­duc­tion of a com­mer­cial farm with such a sig­nif­i­cant lev­el of fresh agri­cul­tur­al pro­duce?

• Why were red her­rings be­ing thrown by the Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion that a re­quest had been made for Tuck­er Val­ley to be trans­ferred from the Min­istry of Hous­ing to the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion?

• What does this por­tend for a pre­ferred bid­der? Has an op­er­a­tor been al­ready iden­ti­fied?

• If the in­ten­tion is to place 100 acres of this Tuck­er Val­ley Farm, al­ready out­fit­ted with a num­ber of green­hous­es, in­to the hands of a sin­gle de­vel­op­er, what safe­guards will be put in­to the state agri­cul­tur­al lease to en­sure that these lands are not con­vert­ed to oth­er com­mer­cial use?

Mean­while in terms of the broad­er pic­ture of the 419 plots of State land ad­ver­tised for lease, care should be tak­en so there is not the slight­est per­cep­tion that the en­tire "plan­ta­tion" is be­ing hand­ed over to one group of cit­i­zens. While it is grat­i­fy­ing to note the for­mal com­mis­sion­ing of three ad­di­tion­al PNM-ini­ti­at­ed com­mer­cial farms re­cent­ly, Min­is­ter Bharath per­haps should pause in ac­knowl­edge­ment that these are all fruits of the vi­sion­ary PNM gov­ern­ment for com­mer­cial farm­ing. Per­haps Min­is­ter Bharath should al­so pause to in­di­cate whether these full-page, full-colour ad­ver­to­ri­als in the dai­ly news­pa­pers, at great ex­pense to the State, can be jus­ti­fied.