SHAS­TRI BOODAN

T&T needs to pro­duce and con­sume more lo­cal­ly-grown fruits.The sug­ges­tion was made by Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs Vas­ant Bharath dur­ing his ad­dress at an award func­tion for the min­istry's World Food Day Art and Pho­to Com­pe­ti­tion. The event took place the Rudranath Capildeo Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre, McBean, Cou­va, on Tues­day.

"We cur­rent­ly pro­duce a high per­cent­age of our veg­eta­bles con­sumed...We can in­crease our con­sump­tion of lo­cal fruits, for as con­sumers, we can in­flu­ence the lev­els and avail­abil­i­ty of sup­ply," Bharath said.He said year-round fruits like pineap­ple, wa­ter­mel­on, paw paw and dwarf pom­me­cythere were avail­able."You can there­fore ob­tain a larg­er por­tion of your fruit sources by us­ing fruits in all forms, in­clud­ing fresh, as chows or as smooth­ies," he said.Bharath said con­sump­tion of sta­ples such as cas­sa­va, sweet pota­to and rice were be­ing en­cour­aged."Have you ever had sweet pota­to or cas­sa­va fries?" he asked.

He said in the pro­tein food group, T&T was large­ly self-suf­fi­cient in sup­ply­ing re­quire­ments for chick­en, but had a long way to go to meet the na­tion's goat and mut­ton con­sump­tion re­quire­ments.Bharath said there was al­so the op­por­tu­ni­ty for ex­pan­sion of lo­cal pro­duc­tion of oth­er pro­tein sources via legumes such as bo­di and seim, as well as in­creased fresh wa­ter fish pro­duc­tion via aqua­cul­ture.The min­is­ter said the com­pe­ti­tion was launched three months ago and in­volved 16 schools."Many of the en­tries in the com­pe­ti­tion did show that, as stu­dents, you have a grasp of bal­anced nu­tri­tion since you de­pict­ed a plate with a com­bi­na­tion of fruits, veg­eta­bles, pro­tein and sta­ples," he said.Bharat chal­lenged stu­dents to plant a home gar­den dur­ing the up­com­ing school hol­i­days.