The an­nounce­ment by Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Vas­ant Bharath, that his min­istry had ap­proved the largest dis­tri­b­u­tion of land on record by the Gov­ern­ment for agri­cul­ture, is a wel­come and pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment in the con­tin­u­ing ef­fort to stim­u­late the mar­ket for lo­cal­ly grown food crops. Ac­cord­ing to Bharath, the min­istry will make avail­able thou­sands of acres of land that were ly­ing bar­ren and un­pro­duc­tive through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go and will sup­ple­ment this ini­tia­tive with im­proved ac­cess to agri­cul­tur­al in­cen­tives, by­pass­ing, in some cas­es, the need for the pre­req­ui­site of doc­u­ment­ed land tenure.

The move is like­ly to open up the busi­ness of agri­cul­ture to more na­tion­als keen to par­tic­i­pate in the growth of agron­o­my as a pro­fes­sion. The acreage for lease will be ad­ver­tised and pro­pos­als for agri­cul­tur­al projects will be in­vit­ed as part of the process of mak­ing the lands avail­able for de­vel­op­ment.

The Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter point­ed out that over the last 15 years, no more than 1,800 acres of land had been dis­trib­uted to farm­ers. The new dis­tri­b­u­tion will con­sti­tute 3,980 acres of land in ar­eas which in­clude Or­ange Grove, Jern­ing­ham Junc­tion, Ed­in­burgh, La Glo­ria Es­tate, Be­ju­cal and Fe­lic­i­ty. In cre­at­ing the new pro­gramme of land dis­tri­b­u­tion, Bharath em­pha­sised the pain points of lo­cal food pro­duc­tion, not­ing the need for the coun­try to push hard­er for an in­crease in the lo­cal pro­duc­tion of ba­sic sta­ples such as rice.

Three weeks ago, the Min­istry al­lo­cat­ed 100 acres in Cen­tral Trinidad for rice pro­duc­tion and the Min­is­ter hopes to fore­stall a sit­u­a­tion that might find this coun­try un­able to source im­port­ed rice in suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ty or at an agree­able price. Al­so high on the agen­da for this dis­tri­b­u­tion of State lands is the cul­ti­va­tion of cas­sa­va, sweet pota­to, toma­toes, pump­kin, patchoi, ochroes, co­conut, sweet pep­per, pi­geon peas, aqua­cul­ture and the rear­ing of small ru­mi­nants such as rab­bits and goats. In putting some wel­come ped­al to the met­al on prac­ti­cal mea­sures to in­crease the growth of the lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­my, Min­is­ter Bharath must be sure to put sus­tain­able sys­tems in place to mon­i­tor, re­view and sup­port this ini­tial ef­fort at stim­u­lat­ing the sec­tor.

In an­nounc­ing this mas­sive in­crease in lease­hold land avail­able for agri­cul­ture, the Min­is­ter fur­ther an­nounced that 200 kilo­me­tres of ac­cess roads and 300 re­ten­tion ponds would be con­struct­ed to bring this acreage in­to pro­duc­tive use, but there will need to be more sup­port than that if the project is to bear the kind of, shall we say, fruit that's be­ing hoped for. Min­is­ter Bharath should take note of the many fail­ures of ex­e­cu­tion that ac­com­pa­nied the dis­tri­b­u­tion of lands for agri­cul­tur­al use at Ca­roni and al­so be guid­ed by the niche suc­cess­es of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion's pi­lot projects to cre­ate su­per­farms. In seek­ing broad­er par­tic­i­pa­tion from the pop­u­la­tion than the more pro­fes­sion­al and in­sti­tu­tion­al su­per­farms project would have in­vit­ed, the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion must be ready with ed­u­ca­tion and coach­ing pro­grammes for new farm­ers and de­vel­op much faster re­sponse sys­tems avail­able to meet the kind of crises that make or break agri­cul­tur­al projects.

The Min­istry should al­so heed the call from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Agri-busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion, an um­brel­la as­so­ci­a­tion of lo­cal sup­pli­ers who work with farm­ers, to re­move or at least re­duce the Val­ue Added Tax and du­ty regime on im­port­ed agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts, med­i­cine and equip­ment. Where such prod­ucts can on­ly be used in the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try, the Min­is­ter might find it use­ful to, at the very least, craft a stim­u­lus pack­age de­signed to in­crease in­vest­ment in the sec­tor by ap­ply­ing the kind of in­vest­ment grace pe­ri­od that's worked well in build­ing the oil and gas sec­tor. This mas­sive land dis­tri­b­u­tion is a laud­able step in the right di­rec­tion for grow­ing lo­cal agri­cul­ture as a vi­able busi­ness, but to achieve the re­sults he hopes for, Min­is­ter Bharath will have to com­mit to con­tin­u­ous re­view and reap­praisal of the out­comes of the many ini­tia­tives that will be nec­es­sary to re­vive agri­cul­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go.