In this first of a three-part se­ries, Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs Sen­a­tor VAS­ANT BHARATH, who has been cam­paign­ing to pro­mote food se­cu­ri­ty, says food stocks in de­vel­oped coun­tries are at an all-time low, the Caribbean is the most food in­se­cure re­gion of the hemi­sphere, and the glob­al pop­u­la­tion will reach over nine bil­lion by 2050-which is why, sim­ply put, every­one needs to try their hands at home gar­den­ing.

Food touch­es all our lives, at least three times a day. Grow­ing your own food is ex­cit­ing, not on­ly be­cause you get to see things grow from noth­ing in­to ready-to-eat fruits and veg­eta­bles, but you al­so do not have to wor­ry about the pes­ti­cides they might con­tain, and you cer­tain­ly re­duce the miles they-and you-have to trav­el.

As it turns out, with pret­ty min­i­mal ef­fort, any­one can be a gar­den­er. Even I have tried my hands at some home gar­den­ing! It was just last year, in Ju­ly, that the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs launched the Na­tion­al Cam­paign to pro­mote food se­cu­ri­ty with the tagline, "Put T&T on your ta­ble-eat healthy foods, grown right here!"

Through this cam­paign, we are at­tempt­ing to cre­ate a brand called Trinidad and To­ba­go foods-our very own brand, grown right here. It is an in­dis­putable fact that our lo­cal foods are nu­tri­tious, healthy and af­ford­able. This year sees us fo­cus­ing on ways in which to af­fect a down­ward trend in food prices.

Ris­ing food prices are an in­ter­na­tion­al phe­nom­e­non, mar­shalling the at­ten­tion of agen­cies the world over. So crit­i­cal an is­sue was it that the theme for 2012 World Food Day is "Food Prices-from cri­sis to sta­bil­i­ty." World Food Day is an in­ter­na­tion­al day, cel­e­brat­ed on Oc­to­ber 16 each year, to recog­nise the im­por­tance of hav­ing healthy food avail­able to all cit­i­zens of every na­tion.

Our coun­try im­ports our ba­sic foods when we can grow most of it here at home. We spend more than $4 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly on im­port­ing these foods. This means the more mon­ey we spend on im­port­ing food, the less we have to spend on oth­er im­por­tant things. There are five ma­jor is­sues that should en­cour­age you to want to grow and eat more of your own food. They are:

• Surg­ing eco­nom­ic growth and ris­ing stan­dards of liv­ing in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries that have re­sult­ed in an un­prece­dent­ed de­mand for food. Food stocks in de­vel­oped coun­tries are at an all-time low.

• The Caribbean re­gion is the most food-in­se­cure re­gion of the hemi­sphere. This is so be­cause our rel­a­tive­ly small size lim­its our ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce all our food needs. Hav­ing said that, how­ev­er, I has­ten to add that we can pro­duce more of what we con­sume.

• The agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor con­tributes more than 25 per cent of the re­gion's Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP); more than 40 per cent of its ex­ports; and pro­vides jobs and em­ploy­ment for thou­sands of rur­al fam­i­lies.

• A study by the Caribbean Re­gion­al Ne­go­ti­at­ing Ma­chin­ery (RNM) shows the agri-food dis­tri­b­u­tion sec­tor com­pris­es over 17,000 com­pa­nies, em­ploy­ing over 112,000 peo­ple and gen­er­at­ing sales of over $5.6 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, and

• The va­garies of cli­mate change and high en­er­gy prices.

It is pro­ject­ed that the glob­al pop­u­la­tion will reach over nine bil­lion by 2050. This means that the world's farm­ers must dou­ble agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion to meet the ever-in­creas­ing de­mand for food. And we all know that if there is a short­age, or an in­crease in de­mand, prices will in­crease. Re­cent re­ports are that there is an in­ter­na­tion­al trend of a con­tin­ued in­crease in world food prices.

-To be con­tin­ued next week.