An ar­ti­cle in one of the dailies two week­ends ago head­lined, "200 acres State land giv­en to Pires" has trig­gered a num­ber of pub­lic in­ter­est ques­tions. In that ar­ti­cle, state­ments were at­trib­uted to Mr Pires in ap­par­ent chrono­log­i­cal or­der that he re­ceived from the PNM 100 acres of land at Tuck­er Val­ley and an­oth­er 100 acres from the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (UNC�led) at Ed­in­burg, for the pur­pose of agri­cul­ture.

Ex­pressed with­in the state­ment was that the first 100 acres were re­ceived un­der then Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Arnold Pig­gott for the mega farm project. This it is claimed he got from a com­pet­i­tive ten­der in which he was suc­cess­ful. There was al­so a state­ment that he won the con­tract un­der the Patrick Man­ning-led PNM of which Dr. Row­ley was a part for the Tuck­er Val­ley lands. Those state­ments are to­tal­ly in­ac­cu­rate.

The facts are Tuck­er Val­ley lands were nev­er on the "lease block" un­der ten­der by any PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. There­fore my then col­league Dr Row­ley could not have been in a Cab­i­net for any award of Tuck­er Val­ley.

All of the lands al­lo­cat­ed for the mega farm project in­clud­ing Ed­in­burg, but ex­clu­sive of Tuck­er Val­ley re­ceived Cab­i­net ap­proval af­ter a rig­or­ous ten­der­ing process. There­fore Dr Row­ley in op­po­si­tion prop­er­ly ques­tioned the process for al­lo­ca­tion of Tuck­er Val­ley to Mr Pires un­der the UNC-led ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The record must not stand as giv­ing the im­pres­sion that Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Row­ley and Mr Man­ning were par­ties of a Cab­i­net award of Tuck­er Val­ley lands to Mr Pires. Mr Pires, Chair­man of the Al­liance of In­de­pen­dents and a sit­ting mem­ber on the coun­cil of lead­ers of the Third Force Move­ment has an oblig­a­tion to clear the air.

Un­der the last PNM Ad­min­is­tra­tion, agri­cul­ture was iden­ti­fied to play a key role in di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. An ap­proved Plan for the Trans­for­ma­tion of the Agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor from Agri-cul­ture to Agri-busi­ness was put in place with a ma­jor fo­cus on en­tre­pre­neur­ship. Small farm­ers pro­duc­ing pri­ma­ry food crops were to have their farm­ing op­er­a­tions scaled up. Pack­ing Hous­es for stor­age of ex­cess pro­duc­tion, new and im­proved fish land­ing sites were fea­tures in this trans­for­ma­tion for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

A ma­jor ve­hi­cle to pro­pel the rapid ex­pan­sion of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in the quest for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion was the "large or mega, com­mer­cial farm" project, with some four­teen farm sites, one of which was the gov­ern­ment-led Tuck­er Val­ley demon­stra­tion farm, whose acreages in ex­cess of 100 were to be put in­to a va­ri­ety of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion.

These mega farms were to pro­duce in greater vol­ume than small farms to kick start the process for the sup­ply of raw ma­te­ri­als and feed­stock for pri­vate sec­tor-led agro-pro­cess­ing and food man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness­es.

Up­on as­sump­tion of Of­fice by the new Ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2010, this vi­sion­ary pro­gram of the PNM for the up­lift of agri­cul­ture and its di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in­put was de­railed. The PNM had no in­ten­tion of dis­man­tling this prized ini­tia­tive at Tuck­er Val­ley and would there­fore nev­er have award­ed these prime agri­cul­tur­al lands, which po­ten­tial­ly can be di­vert­ed away from agri­cul­ture.

Of two Com­mer­cial farms, which com­menced op­er­a­tions un­der my watch in late 2008, the pri­vate sec­tor led mod­el farm by PCS Ni­tro­gen re­mains op­er­a­tional. To­geth­er with the Gov­ern­ment led Tuck­er Val­ley farm dur­ing the first year pro­duc­tion moved from some 241,134 kgs.to a to­tal of 423,780 kgs of pri­ma­ry crops in 2010. Con­sid­er the po­ten­tial for sig­nif­i­cant in­cre­men­tal in­creas­es in food pro­duc­tion com­ing from all four­teen mega farms.

The vi­sion of PNM was that the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor with­in ten years would be com­pet­i­tive and pos­sess the ca­pac­i­ty to sus­tain this com­pet­i­tive­ness by be­com­ing, adap­tive, tech­nol­o­gy fo­cused and mar­ket dri­ven. Two fun­da­men­tal roles of the sec­tor were enun­ci­at­ed as fol­lows: one, food se­cu­ri­ty and sov­er­eign­ty, two, eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and ex­pan­sion.

Op­po­si­tion leader Dr. Kei­th Row­ley and the rest of the pop­u­la­tion there­fore de­serve an­swers to the ques­tions posed: Were the Tuck­er Val­ley lands al­lo­cat­ed to Mr Pires for agri­cul­ture and through com­pet­i­tive bid­ding? Was the req­ui­site Cab­i­net ap­proval ob­tained?" Will the Tuck­er Val­ley Lands with its sev­er­al aquifers re­main in agri­cul­ture? Is the new lessee Mr Pires or his Com­pa­ny re­al­ly in­vest­ing in agri­cul­ture?

Arnold Pig­gott

A for­mer Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Lands & Ma­rine Re­sources in Patrick Man­ning's

PNM gov­ern­ment.