Ali­cia Llanos

Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion Vas­ant Bharath says the mega farms es­tab­lished by the last Gov­ern­ment are not giv­ing cit­i­zens val­ue for mon­ey. Bharath was speak­ing yes­ter­day at the Debe mar­ket af­ter he toured the Tuck­er Val­ley farm, Ch­aguara­mas, and met with two pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors in agri­cul­ture.

Com­ment­ing on the Tuck­er Val­ley farm, which falls un­der the purview of the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty, Bharath said the amount in­vest­ed in the farm was not re­flect­ed in its prod­uct yields.

He said there was a lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty when it came to val­ue for mon­ey. Bharath said when he asked why on­ly a small por­tion of the farm was be­ing used, he was told by mem­bers of the CDA the last Gov­ern­ment's Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture had ceased fund­ing. He said a re­quest had been made by the CDA for ad­di­tion­al fund­ing. Bharath said he would be re­view­ing the fi­nances of the farm and oth­er Gov­ern­ment-es­tab­lished farms to en­sure all fund­ing was used where it was al­lo­cat­ed. He said he was dis­ap­point­ed on­ly two out of the 15 pro­posed mega farm projects were be­ing ful­ly used.

A farmer at the Tuck­er Val­ley mega farm, Ch­aguara­mas, tends to some pars­ley yes­ter­day, while Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion Vas­ant Bharath, in back­ground, speaks with mem­bers of the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty. Pho­tos: Kei­th Matthews

CDA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ju­dith Mark de­fend­ed the farm by say­ing the ma­jor­i­ty of mon­ey in­vest­ed went to in­fra­struc­ture, such as green hous­es and a re­search cen­tre. She ad­mit­ted the farm was run­ning at a loss but said pro­duce was go­ing in­to mar­kets. Mark said a large amount of the pro­duce was bought by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Agri­cul­ture Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­BA) and al­so was be­ing used in the school-feed­ing pro­gramme. She was hop­ing for $15 mil­lion to $20 mil­lion to be in­vest­ed in­to the farm to in­crease pro­duc­tion.