Sacha Wil­son

Pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go Dhano Sookoo be­lieves in the vi­sion of the Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs Vas­ant Bharath, but fears there are el­e­ments in his min­istry try­ing to un­der­mine him. Sookoo was re­fer­ring to the im­passe be­tween farm­ers of Or­ange Grove and the Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EM­BD), which erupt­ed in­to a protest ac­tion at the EM­BD of­fice at Val­park Mall last Wednes­day. "I con­tin­ue to say, while the min­is­ter's vi­sion is ex­cel­lent for agri­cul­ture, we agree with his pas­sion, we are here to sup­port his pas­sion and his dri­ve. The agen­cies with­in the min­istries are the ones that are not de­liv­er­ing and that is why we have so many stick­ing points," Sookoo said.

She was speak­ing with re­porters af­ter the launch of the third an­nu­al In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co-op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA) and Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre (Car­di) Me­dia Awards for Ex­cel­lence in Agri­cul­tur­al Jour­nal­ism 2012. She said the min­is­ter al­so has to un­der­stand that in his dri­ve for bet­ter food pro­duc­tion by 2015 he has to re­ly on pub­lic ser­vants. "It has to go be­yond just us sit­ting and talk­ing. There are a lot of is­sues that have to be over­come, a lot of chal­lenges," she con­tin­ued. Sookoo main­tained the EM­BD was at fault and not Bharath for the farm­ers' grow­ing dis­con­tent with land dis­tri­b­u­tion. "The min­is­ter was ill-in­formed by the EM­BD as to what ex­act­ly was hap­pen­ing on those lands. The EM­BD failed to in­form the ho­n­ourable min­is­ter of the high lev­el of agri­cul­ture pro­duc­tion on those lands," she said.