The for­ward-look­ing plan by the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ASTT) to in­crease the pro­duc­tion of sta­ple food crops is a laud­able ef­fort at putting a crit­i­cal­ly need­ed shoul­der to the wheel of na­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion. The three key ASTT mem­bers dri­ving the ini­tia­tive-pres­i­dent Dhano Sookoo and di­rec­tors Naw­iz Karim and Eliz­a­beth Mo­hammed-Ali-plan to put ac­tion to the con­ver­sa­tions on the sub­ject of agri­cul­tur­al re­form and the re­duc­tion the na­tion­al food im­port bill, which some es­ti­mates have put at $4 bil­lion. The sim­ple facts are these. In the face of grow­ing world­wide de­mand for food on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets and re­sult­ing ris­ing cost due to shrink­ing re­sources and more cost­ly ship­ping, Trinidad and To­ba­go's com­mit­ment to in­creas­ing its own agri­cul­tur­al out­put has been bare­ly ad­e­quate.

Not much has been heard since the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment took pow­er of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion's ef­forts at cre­at­ing su­per farms and the pi­lot projects that were ini­ti­at­ed to ex­plore new method­olo­gies for in­creas­ing farm­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. With the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs said to be a part­ner in the ef­fort, it be­hooves Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath to take ad­van­tage of the ground work that has al­ready been done in lo­cal agri­cul­ture and food crop re­search in this new ef­fort to meet the lo­cal need for ba­sic sta­ples. Min­is­ter Bharath is re­spon­si­ble for the en­tire arc of food pro­duc­tion, from plant­i­ng to mar­ket­ing, and must be keen to em­brace the ini­tia­tive of the ASTT to put boot leather to the mud­dy trails that lie ahead. But the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter must be equal­ly aware that re­duc­ing the na­tion­al food im­port bill will re­quire more than plant­i­ng new pro­duce; there will be no quick fix­es to the im­bal­ances be­tween pro­duc­tion and de­mand.

In ad­di­tion, over the last two decades, the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go have de­vel­oped a taste for im­port­ed, processed goods which is now en­trenched and will be chal­leng­ing to re­verse. On the trou­bling mat­ter of land use, the Min­is­ter is al­so ide­al­ly po­si­tioned to re­open the di­a­logue on land for agri­cul­ture ver­sus land for hous­ing de­vel­op­ment which has been a key el­e­ment on the agen­da of lo­cal agri­cul­ture pro­duc­ers and which came to a no­to­ri­ous head when agents of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion bull­dozed 40 acres of crops in Ch­agua­nas and in D'Abadie in May. The Gov­ern­ment has since be­gun dis­tri­b­u­tion of $1.5 mil­lion to com­pen­sate the af­fect­ed farm­ers who cul­ti­vat­ed land ear­marked for the con­struc­tion of 800 hous­ing units at Pineap­ple Cres­cent, D'Abadie and in Egypt Vil­lage in Ch­agua­nas. These con­flicts will con­tin­ue un­til there is a clear, ra­tio­nal and col­lec­tive­ly un­der­stood pol­i­cy on land use in Trinidad and To­ba­go. What's need­ed is a na­tion­al di­a­logue in­formed by thor­ough re­search in­to the land that's avail­able for de­vel­op­ment and agri­cul­ture, prop­er analy­sis of soil po­ten­tial and the struc­tur­al sta­bil­i­ty of un­der­ly­ing ge­olo­gies which would of­fer a bet­ter ba­sis for any plans for the al­lo­ca­tion of land in the coun­try.

Such an analy­sis would like­ly dri­ve the de­vel­op­ment of sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture ap­pro­pri­ate to pro­posed land use and en­gen­der greater co­op­er­a­tion be­tween agri­cul­tur­ists and hous­ing de­vel­op­ers. Such an analy­sis might fur­ther sug­gest a dif­fer­ent role for lands pre­vi­ous­ly over­seen by Ca­roni (1975) Ltd and changes that make bet­ter use of the land al­lo­cat­ed to for­mer em­ploy­ees might need to be ad­dressed through pos­i­tive di­a­logue with any af­fect­ed per­sons. In June, Min­is­ter Bharath was able to point to a 10.6 per cent de­crease in in­fla­tion rates as an in­di­ca­tor of the pow­er­ful ef­fect of in­creased avail­abil­i­ty of food at bet­ter prices.

It's in the na­ture of the po­lit­i­cal im­per­a­tive to seek quick, pos­i­tive gains, but the chal­lenges of in­creas­ing food pro­duc­tion re­main daunt­ing and de­mand a long-term com­mit­ment. It will take sig­nif­i­cant agri­cul­tur­al ef­fort to meet the 2010 im­port de­mand for al­most 200,000 tonnes of food sta­ples and to re-ori­ent con­sumer tastes to fresh, lo­cal­ly grown foods. For­tu­nate­ly, Min­is­ter Bharath is not just the go-to man for such a mis­sion, he has de­clared him­self the point­man for the chal­lenge of re­duc­ing this coun­try's vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to fluc­tu­a­tions in price and avail­abil­i­ty of food sta­ples. His sup­port of the ASTT ini­tia­tive is on­ly like­ly to bear wel­come fruit.