Ken Ali

Vas­ant Bharath, Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, ap­pears to be a man in a hur­ry, ini­ti­at­ing a new num­ber of mea­sures aimed at spurring food pro­duc­tion. Bharath field­ed ques­tions from Sun­day Guardian on his min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio.

Q: What are your cur­rent pri­or­i­ties as Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs?

A: My pri­or­i­ties are to de­vel­op a vi­brant agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, pro­vid­ing an af­ford­able, di­verse and avail­able source of food for our cit­i­zens, while pro­vid­ing a de­cent liv­ing for farm­ers.

What are the like­ly main planks of your one-year strate­gic plan?

It would be con­fronting head-on the many chal­lenges fac­ing farm­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­spect to is­sues of land tenure, flood­ing, wa­ter man­age­ment, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, ac­cess roads and in­cen­tives re­lat­ing to farm in­puts, as well as re­vi­tal­is­ing the sheep, goat and live­stock in­dus­tries.

Are there spe­cif­ic food crops you are ear­mark­ing for spe­cial fo­cus?

Not nec­es­sar­i­ly. What we will be at­tempt­ing to en­sure, is that there is a plen­ti­ful and con­stant sup­ply of those foods that are con­sid­ered sta­ples in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and that over time we will zone crops so they are grown in ar­eas more com­pat­i­ble with soil type. Over time, we will di­ver­si­fy our crop range.

You have in­di­cat­ed that farm­ers would soon be com­pen­sat­ed for crop loss­es. Could you pro­vide de­tails?

The cur­rent for­mu­la used, and the time­frame with­in which farm­ers are com­pen­sat­ed, both act as de­mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tors. In fact, there are farm­ers still wait­ing to be com­pen­sat­ed for flood dam­age that oc­curred more than two years ago. We are cur­rent­ly re­view­ing the for­mu­la for com­pen­sa­tion, since it is cur­rent­ly based on cost fac­tors dat­ing back to 1994. This is clear­ly un­ac­cept­able. I have al­so man­dat­ed a re­view of our data­bas­es, so that more up-to-date and rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion can be record­ed and utilised with re­gard to type of crops plant­ed and pro­ject­ed dates of har­vest. This will as­sist min­istry staff to as­sess any dam­age more ef­fi­cient­ly, ef­fec­tive­ly and speed­i­ly. Once the sys­tem is on stream, it is our aim to process all valid claims with­in one month.

How soon do you ex­pect ef­fec­tive flood-con­trol mea­sures to be put in­to place?

Work­ing to­geth­er with the Min­istry of Works and Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, we will be­gin an ex­ten­sive ex­er­cise with­in one month to pool re­sources to tack­le all ma­jor drains, wa­ter­ways, bridges and ac­cess roads, to en­sure that the is­sue of flood­ing is sig­nif­i­cant­ly min­imised. A more com­pre­hen­sive and per­ma­nent so­lu­tion will be im­ple­ment­ed as soon as a drainage mas­ter plan is drawn up.

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What is the state of the mega-farms, and what con­tri­bu­tion are they mak­ing to food pro­duc­tion?

Cur­rent­ly, out of the 15 large parcels al­lo­cat­ed for the mega farms, on­ly two are up and run­ning. The PCS Ni­tro­gen farm is es­sen­tial­ly a mod­el farm, which is in­volved pri­mar­i­ly in train­ing farm­ers to bet­ter un­der­stand crops and farm­ing tech­niques. The mega farm at Ch­aguara­mas has a de­vel­op­men­tal com­po­nent, but is strug­gling to be­come self-fund­ing. The pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­ready ex­pend­ed close to $100 mil­lion in in­fra­struc­tur­al work on the 15 plots, and cit­i­zens are right­ly con­cerned that these farms are yet to con­tribute in any sig­nif­i­cant way to food pro­duc­tion.

Are there plans to re­view the mega-farms and to in­tro­duce new ones?

I spent some time dur­ing the last week vis­it­ing three of these sites, and I am due to meet all 15 mega-farm lease­hold­ers on Wednes­day of this com­ing week. I in­tend to get from them their plans for the lands, the time frame for start-up of the farms and to dis­cuss with them the re­al and se­ri­ous is­sue of com­pet­ing with small lo­cal farm­ers. These dis­cus­sions will in­form the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion on its way for­ward with the mega-farms.

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You have held dis­cus­sions with farm­ers' bod­ies. Do you all share a sim­i­lar vi­sion for in­creased food pro­duc­tion?

Farm­ers have al­ways felt ne­glect­ed.�Dur­ing the last week we have held dis­cus­sions with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of more than 100 farm­ers' as­so­ci­a­tions, and yes­ter­day held a one-day work­shop where farm­ers had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to not on­ly voice their con­cerns and chal­lenges, but al­so to make rec­om­men­da­tions on the way for­ward. These were wide-rang­ing and in­tense dis­cus­sions, and I be­lieve that we have agreed on the core is­sues and prin­ci­ples to be in­clud­ed in our strate­gic one-year plan for de­vel­op­ment of the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try.

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The pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment re­peat­ed­ly spoke of in­tro­duc­ing ef­fec­tive prae­di­al lar­ce­ny mech­a­nisms. Is this a pri­or­i­ty of your min­istry?

It is one of those is­sues at the very top of the list; it is the bane of the in­dus­try.�At the end of the day, noth­ing is more frus­trat­ing than plant­i­ng and nur­tur­ing a crop for sev­er­al months, on­ly to have it pil­fered at the time of har­vest.�We are cur­rent­ly re­view­ing sev­er­al op­tions to min­imise this das­tard­ly and rep­re­hen­si­ble crime, in­clud­ing much stiffer penal­ties and the tag­ging of food crops and live­stock from farm to mar­ket, as well as the pos­si­bil­i­ty of hold­ing farm­ers' courts to speed­i­ly deal with this is­sue.

Do you plan to con­struct Namde­v­co whole­sale mar­kets clos­er to ar­eas of mass pro­duc­tion?

If we are able to pro­vide prop­er ac­cess roads and fast and con­ve­nient trans­port mech­a­nisms for farm­ers to get their goods to mar­ket, then there is no re­al ne­ces­si­ty to move whole­sale mar­kets clos­er to pro­duc­tion ar­eas. What is equal­ly im­por­tant is that it is con­ve­nient for the whole­saler to get from the Namde­v­co mar­ket to the re­tail mar­ket.

You have spo­ken of re­turn­ing for­mer sug­ar land to agri­cul­tur­al use. Has this plan been for­malised, and what does it mean for agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion?

The pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had em­barked on a pro­gramme of us­ing some of the most fer­tile, pro­duc­tive and arable lands in Trinidad and To­ba­go for the pur­pose of con­struct­ing hous­es. There was even a de­ci­sion made to build a prison on Ca­roni lands. Al­though no plans have yet been fi­nalised, I plan to lob­by the Min­is­ters of Fi­nance and Hous­ing to have those lands re­turned to the farm­ing fra­ter­ni­ty. If we can ac­com­plish this, then we are like­ly to har­ness ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30,000 acres of prime agri­cul­tur­al lands that would un­doubt­ed­ly con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to our gov­ern­ment's aim of pro­vid­ing long-term food se­cu­ri­ty, with qual­i­ty foods be­ing pro­duced at af­ford­able prices for our na­tion.