This week guest colum­nist VAS­ANT BHARATH Min­is­ter, Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs con­tin­ues the third of his six-part se­ries in this space on food se­cu­ri­ty. He tack­les the ques­tion of how the Gov­ern­ment means to back farm­ers to go lo­cal.

Agri­cul­ture is a busi­ness and my Gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing the en­abling en­vi­ron­ment to en­cour­age en­tre­pre­neurs in this sec­tor. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, agri­cul­ture is not seen as an at­trac­tive ca­reer choice. We have been ac­cul­tur­at­ed to think that work with the hands is me­nial. But agri­cul­ture is not on­ly work with the hands. Tra­di­tion­al agri­cul­ture may in fact be so, but we have high­ly mech­a­nised and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ad­vanced sys­tems that cur­rent­ly ex­ist.

Do you know that there are over two hun­dred (200) ca­reer choic­es in the field of agri­cul­ture? In the ar­eas of Agri­cul­ture Pro­duc­tion (seedling pro­duc­er, bee­keep­er); Agri-busi­ness (in­sur­ance agent, chem­i­cal sup­pli­er, com­mod­i­ty deal­er); Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and Health Sci­en­tist (bio­chemist, plant ge­neti­cist, vet­eri­nar­i­an, nu­tri­tion­ist); Agri­cul­tur­al Spe­cial­ists (jour­nal­ist, ac­coun­tant, loans of­fi­cer); Agri­cul­tur­al En­gi­neers and Me­chan­ics (civ­il en­gi­neer, ir­ri­ga­tion en­gi­neer, land sur­vey­or); Hor­ti­cul­ture (land­scap­er, golf course man­ag­er, park man­ag­er); Re­source Man­age­ment (wild life spe­cial­ist, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist, soil con­ser­va­tion­ist); and Agri­cul­ture Pro­cess­ing and Dis­tri­b­u­tion (plant quar­an­tine of­fi­cer, en­tre­pre­neur).

Lead­ing from the front, my min­istry de­cid­ed to tan­gi­bly dis­play our sup­port of the in­dus­try and our lo­cal farm­ers with the pol­i­cy de­ci­sion tak­en to on­ly serve a lo­cal menu at all min­istry events. To demon­strate how prac­ti­cal a de­ci­sion this was to all oth­er min­istries, while en­cour­ag­ing them to do the same, the Min­istry host­ed its pre­mier event, World Food Day "Food Fest," in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies on No­vem­ber 12 and 13, 2010 at the JFK Quad­ran­gle, UWI St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

The pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive of the World Food Day cel­e­bra­tion was to demon­strate the vast ar­ray of lo­cal pro­duce (agri­cul­ture and live­stock) that are preva­lent in Trinidad and To­ba­go; and to show­case the op­por­tu­ni­ties in­her­ent in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor and thus en­cour­age sus­tained youth in­ter­est. "There is no taste like home!" said a re­turn­ing res­i­dent af­ter hav­ing one of her favourite man­goes re­cent­ly. We have so many fruits and veg­eta­bles that are syn­ony­mous with our twin is­land re­pub­lic. Fruits and veg­eta­bles that are unique to us and nu­tri­tion­al.

On Ju­ly 20, we launched a na­tion­al cam­paign to pro­mote food se­cu­ri­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go. A cam­paign that, for me, birthed the ul­ti­mate goal of my Min­istry, which is to "Put Trinidad and To­ba­go on your ta­ble." We are at­tempt­ing to cre­ate a brand called agri­cul­ture, a brand called Trinidad and To­ba­go foods. Our very own brand, grown right here. We re­alised though that we must first cre­ate and in­stil na­tion­al pride in that which is ours. Through this Na­tion­al Cam­paign, we are high­light­ing the val­ue of our lo­cal farm­ers and re­store re­spect to our farm­ers. This cam­paign will in­crease aware­ness of the lo­cal pro­duce (nu­tri­tion­al, health and va­ri­ety) and thus cre­ate an in­creased de­mand for the lo­cal pro­duce (meat, fruits and veg­eta­bles) there­fore stim­u­lat­ing lo­cal pro­duc­tion.

To ef­fect change, we must first start with the young minds. Any man­age­ment con­sul­tant will tell you that be­hav­iours are learnt, so we in­tend to shape and mould the minds of our na­tion's youths to ac­quire a taste for lo­cal pro­duce. We have en­gaged in ini­tial dis­cus­sions with the Na­tion­al Schools Di­etary Ser­vices Ltd (NS­D­SL) to col­lab­o­rate in pro­vid­ing more lo­cal con­tent to our school chil­dren through the 150,000 dai­ly meals pro­vid­ed through the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme. The so­cial ac­cep­tance of these "new prod­ucts" are of course sup­port­ed by this cam­paign which cre­ates an ap­peal and de­mand for "lo­cal."

• To be con­tin­ued.