Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter, Vas­ant Bharath is con­fi­dent that mea­sures are in place to en­cour­age food se­cu­ri­ty in T&T. In March Gov­ern­ment met with farm­ers' groups such as the Aranguez Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and the Cunu­pia Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and oth­ers to talk about the pos­si­ble so­lu­tions to food se­cu­ri­ty. The sug­ges­tions which were tak­en from more than 100 farm­ers would be part of an over­all food se­cu­ri­ty plan for TnT. Some of the prob­lems tabled were low sup­ply of wa­ter dur­ing the dry sea­son and flood­ing dur­ing the rainy sea­son.

Though the over­all plan is not yet in mo­tion, Bharath has giv­en a dead­line of May to com­plete 300 ponds so that wa­ter would be avail­able dur­ing pe­ri­ods of drought. Apart from ponds, he said Gov­ern­ment plans to clean ma­jor wa­ter­ways and drains so the wa­ter would not back-up in the even­tu­al­i­ty that there is heavy rain. An­oth­er mea­sure would be to de-silt the riv­er mouth lo­cat­ed near Ca­roni. For years farm­ers have been com­plain­ing about the in­cen­tives that are award­ed to them but, Bharath said Gov­ern­ment has looked at the in­cen­tives pack­age and made "mean­ing­ful" changes.

Ad­dress­ing the con­cerns of farm­ers about land se­cu­ri­ty, he said, steps are be­ing tak­en to in­tro­duce new tech­nol­o­gy to farm­ing in T&T, like green­house farm­ing, so that young farm­ers would view agri­cul­ture as a busi­ness and as a sci­ence. Co­coa, co­conut and grape­fruit farm­ing are oth­er ar­eas which Gov­ern­ment is at­tempt­ing to boost. Gov­ern­ment is al­so con­sid­er­ing sug­gest­ing to farm­ers that they plant in blocks. This strat­e­gy ac­cord­ing to Bharath, would en­able Gov­ern­ment to keep a bet­ter record of what is avail­able to TnT.