Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Just one day be­fore the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2012/2013 bud­get by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai, the T&T Agribusi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­BA) says it is hop­ing their plan to save the agri­cul­ture sec­tor more than $160 mil­lion in food im­ports will be sup­port­ed. The coun­try's food im­port bill stands ap­prox­i­mate­ly at $4 bil­lion.

Pres­i­dent of TTA­BA, Vas­sal Stew­art, said: "The as­so­ci­a­tion sub­mit­ted a plan to gov­ern­ment aimed at se­ri­ous­ly tack­ling the grow­ing food im­port bill, com­mence di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my and grow ex­ports based on the po­ten­tial of the agri­cul­tur­al and agri-busi­ness sec­tors." Ac­cord­ing to TTA­BA, by the end of 2015 their plan could achieve more than $160 mil­lion in im­port sav­ings in terms of cost, in­sur­ance and freight (CIF) val­ue.

The plan will al­so save more than $560 mil­lion in re­tail val­ue, sup­ply more than 36,000 tonnes of fresh pro­duce, 25,847 tonnes of val­ue-added food prod­ucts, con­tract 676 farm­ers, cre­ate 2,731 jobs along the val­ue chain and in­crease yields in se­lect­ed com­modi­ties by more than 30 per cent. This will be achieved main­ly through full-scale com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions while fo­cus­ing on spe­cif­ic prod­ucts that would bring the re­quired yields.

"We have been able to suc­cess­ful­ly build ca­pac­i­ty through net­work­ing with oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions and with our last five years of hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence we are con­fi­dent that we could re­alise our three-year plan," Stew­art said. The com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions would in­clude TTA­BA'S plan to con­sol­i­date all its op­er­a­tions un­der one roof in a mod­ern in­dus­tri­al com­plex in Freeport.

Stew­art said the group will move its de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy to the next phase-from a fo­cus on re­search and de­vel­op­ment and pi­lot com­mer­cial op­er­a­tions to a full com­mer­cial scale op­er­a­tion. He said cur­rent­ly T&T im­ports 38,000 tonnes of wheat for bak­eries, 11,000 tonnes of white pota­to fries, 78,000 tonnes of fresh white pota­to and oth­er wheat prod­ucts, 105,000 tonnes of sin­gle strength juices, 2095 tonnes of toma­to paste, 343 tonnes of hot pep­per mash and 1256 tonnes of sweet corn.

He said these are some of the spe­cif­ic prod­ucts TTA­BA would be fo­cus­ing on, as its main ob­jec­tives in­clude dis­plac­ing a per­cent­age of the im­port­ed prod­ucts and re­plac­ing them with cas­sa­va, sweet pota­to and plan­tain puree; pom­me­cythere, sor­rel and paw paw juice to re­place im­port­ed sin­gle strength juices; paw paw and pump­kin puree to re­place toma­to paste; and lo­cal hot pep­per mash and sweet corn pro­duce.

"By the end of 2015 TTA­BA aims to di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly en­sure the dis­place­ment of 15 per cent of white pota­to fries that goes in­to the fast food in­dus­try, ten per cent of the wheat that goes in­to the bak­ery in­dus­try, ten per cent of fresh white pota­to mar­ket, es­pe­cial­ly the house­hold mar­ket," Stew­art said.

"We will al­so seek to en­sure that 50 per cent of the sta­ples that go in­to the school nu­tri­tion pro­gramme come from lo­cal pro­duc­tion. We will ask con­sumers to each year re­place an ad­di­tion­al five pounds of im­port­ed sta­ples that they now con­sume, with lo­cal sta­ples such as sweet pota­to, plan­tain and cas­sa­va.

Stew­art said TTA­BA plans to re­duce its prod­uct range over the next three years and will fo­cus on com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion of val­ue-added prod­ucts aimed main­ly at the food man­u­fac­tur­ing and in­sti­tu­tion­al mar­kets, which have high growth po­ten­tial.