The Ministry of Food Production, Land and Marine Affairs is seeking to drastically reduce the country's outflow of valuable foreign exchange. So said its minister Vasant Bharath at the Staples Production Signing Agreement between the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the T&T Agribusiness Association (TTABA) at the office of the campus principal, UWI, St Augustine on Wednesday. UWI principal Professor Clement Sankat signed on behalf of the university campus. Also speaking at the event was TTABA chairman Winston Borrel.
Bharath said the government is seeking to provide food security by reducing the cost of foodstuff and also provide long-term productive employment by using agriculture as an engine of diversification away from oil and gas and reducing the outflows of much needed valuable foreign exchange. "In T&T we produce only about eight per cent of the staples that we consume," Bharath said. "And 95 per cent of the rice is imported. Also corn and wheat virtually none of which is produced in T&T. We import $700 million of staples every year."
He questioned what could be used as substitutes for the staple items in order to reduce the 92 per cent import bill. And in this regard Bharath said his ministry was now focusing on crops such as cassava, sweet potato, rice, dasheen and eddoes which are all grown locally.
Bharath said the programme will allow for the creation of higher yields in cassava. He said over 4,000 acres of land will soon be handed over to farmers and entrepreneurs but with a difference. "They will have to grow the kinds of crops that are in line with the ministry's food production programme and also farmed in a certain way," he said. Bharath said it is hoped that the farmers can each produce 15,000 or 20,000 pounds of cassava the right way. He said the thrust to increase local food production will see 50 UWI graduates entering the ministry's agricultural internship programme from April 15.
