Re­ports that the Gov­ern­ment plans to pro­vide 10,000 acres of land in Guyana for T&T's farm­ers have al­ready stirred up dis­con­tent­ment with­in the agri­cul­tur­al in­dus­try.Among the groups voic­ing their con­cerns are the T&T Agri­cul­ture So­ci­ety, Unit­ed Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and the T&T Cane Pro­duc­ers As­so­ci­a­tion.In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent of the T&T Unit­ed Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Ali called on the Gov­ern­ment to dis­close who are the farm­ers who would stand to ben­e­fit from farm­ing in Guyana.He added that de­vel­op­ment of agri­cul­tur­al land in Guyana would not bring about a dent in T&T's $4 bil­lion food im­port bill.Ali said any move to boost agri­cul­tur­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in T&T should be geared at re­duc­ing this ex­or­bi­tant fig­ure which has con­tributed to es­ca­lat­ing in­fla­tion."If those T&T farm­ers bring in food in­to the coun­try will it not be con­sid­ered im­port­ed food? This ef­fort is not go­ing to bring a dent on the food im­port bill," he said.

Ali not­ed there was more than 10,000 acres of fer­tile agri­cul­tur­al land in T&T which could be de­vel­oped for farm­ing."Lo­cal farm­ers are yearn­ing for gov­ern­ment sup­port in terms of lease and in­fra­struc­ture," he said."We ig­nore them yet we plan to take se­lect­ed farm­ers to Guyana and give them mas­sive loans for hous­ing. This does­nt make sense. What will be our re­turn from this in­vest­ment?" Ali said.He not­ed that farm­ers in Waller­field and Carlsen Field had been beg­ging for years for land to be reg­u­larised."Re­cent­ly, the Gov­ern­ment gave 500 farm­ers two acre-leas­es but those farm­ers have no road ac­cess to lands, no wa­ter for their crops when dry sea­son comes," Ali said."How can they use these lands if there is no in­fra­struc­ture? Why is gov­ern­ment con­cerned about sat­is­fy­ing its fi­nanciers and friends rather than de­vel­op agri­cul­ture in T&T."He not­ed that un­der the PNM, the then agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Arnold Pig­gott spoke about bring­ing 7,000 peo­ple in­to lu­cra­tive farm­ing. Ali said the Gov­ern­ment should fol­low the same by of­fer­ing leas­es, in­cen­tives and loans to lo­cal farm­ers.

In­stead of of­fer­ing lands in Guyana to lo­cal farm­ers, Ali said the Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er set­ting up a mega farm in Guyana which would pro­duce corn for an­i­mal feed pro­duc­tion. He ex­plained that corn was fast be­com­ing scarce be­cause the Unit­ed States was us­ing corn to pro­duce bio­fu­el.Ali al­so said the Gov­ern­ment had no con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor be­fore de­cid­ing on land de­vel­op­ment in Guyana.He re­vealed that lo­cal farm­ers were fac­ing fierce com­pe­ti­tion from T&T's mega farms."Ca­roni has 77,000 acres of lands which are now aban­doned. We have the Non Pareil Es­tate in San­gre Grande which is 27,00 acres plus. In Waller­field, we have over 1,200 acres. There are thou­sands of acres in Carlsen Field. For years we have been beg­ging gov­ern­ment to make lands avail­able. Why do they now want to go to Guyana? What is the cost arrange­ment with Guyana. How will we get pro­duce back to Trinidad?" Sookoo said.

She added that the mega farms of T&T was sup­posed to cater for ex­port­ing but in­stead were caus­ing a glut in the mar­ket. She said T&T had enough land to pro­duce food for all of Cari­com.

"Prop­er freight arrange­ments are not there. All we have is schooners and we need prop­er re­frig­er­at­ed ves­sels to al­low us to ex­port. Why doesn't gov­ern­ment deal with these prob­lems rather than fo­cussing on de­vel­op­ing agri­cul­ture in Guyana," Sookoo lament­ed.She said a lot has been in­vest­ed in agri­cul­ture, in­clud­ing the dig­ging of 500 farm ponds and paving of hun­dreds of kilo­me­tres of ac­cess roads."What we need now are leas­es and prop­er meth­ods to sus­tain agri­cul­ture," she added.Pres­i­dent of the Cane Pro­duc­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Seukaran Tam­bie al­so said he was skep­ti­cal about who would ben­e­fit from the Guyananese agri­cul­ture de­vel­op­ment plan."Is it big busi­ness or small­er farm­ers who stand to gain. What is the cost arrange­ments be­tween T&T and Guyana? It will cost more than $50,000 to de­vel­op one acre of land. Who will pay for this?" Tam­bie said.He ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of try­ing to kill the lo­cal agri­cul­ture in­dus­try. Tam­bie said every sec­tor of agri­cul­ture had been de­clin­ing in re­cent years. He al­so said that no con­sul­ta­tion was ever made with the lo­cal agri­cul­ture stake­hold­ers be­fore de­ci­sions were made to boost agri­cul­ture.It is ex­pect­ed that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai would out­line the de­tails of the new land pol­i­cy in Guyana. Un­der the agree­ment in­vestors would be able to ap­ply to the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion for a per­mit to farm in Guyana.