Michelle Loubon

Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath says adopt­ing a "Buy Lo­cal" ap­proach will sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the T&T food im­port bill cur­rent­ly put at TT$4 bil­lion. He said if T&T was to prop­er­ly de­vel­op its lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor it could ex­port food to Cari­com coun­tries-whose food im­port bill stands at US$4 bil­lion per an­num. In­ter­viewed re­cent­ly, Bharath said: "We spend about $4 bil­lion on food im­ports. It is one of the rea­sons we launched 'Put T&T On Your Ta­ble'. It is es­sen­tial­ly about get­ting more con­sumers to pur­chase lo­cal­ly grown fruits and veg­eta­bles."

Bharath added: "The gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank (Ewart Williams) has stat­ed in­fla­tion has been at its low­est for the last 40 years. Food prices have fall­en over the last six months. "That's an­oth­er rea­son why we are en­cour­ag­ing farm­ers to grow lo­cal." Apart from farm­ers cul­ti­vat­ing crops on small acreages, Bharath boast­ed about the thrust to mega farms. Ear­li­er this month they launched an­oth­er one of their large farms. Bharath said: "In Ju­ly, we launched the first which was sup­posed to be in sweet corn and hot pep­pers. In Au­gust, we saw the re­sus­ci­ta­tion of the rice in­dus­try. We have ded­i­cat­ed 100 acres to rice farm­ers. Up 'till 50 years ago, we pro­duced a lot of rice."

Grim in­ter­na­tion­al pic­ture

The in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate paints a hor­ri­ble pic­ture in places like war-torn So­ma­lia. Josette Sheer­an of the World Food Pro­gramme warns that two mil­lion peo­ple could die be­cause Is­lam­ic mil­i­tants known as Al-Shabab are pre­vent­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of emer­gency food sup­plies to the famine-strick­en south of the coun­try. At home, Bharath said, a boost to the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor is manda­to­ry since the ma­jor­i­ty of for­eign coun­tries which ex­port goods to T&T have been sub­ject to the va­garies of cli­mate change, var­i­ous forms of land use rather than agri­cul­ture and a bur­geon­ing mid­dle class.

He said: "Fac­tors like these are cur­tail­ing the ex­ports of these foods. It is in­cum­bent on us as a Gov­ern­ment to en­sure we have food se­cu­ri­ty. "To­day, we are pro­duc­ing less than 5 per cent. We could start sub­sti­tut­ing. There are more things we could grow lo­cal­ly and bet­ter our econ­o­my."

More sweet pota­to fries

Pat­ting him­self on the back, Bharath said: "On­ly to­day, the flag­ship out­lets (sell­ing sweet pota­to fries) raised it from six to nine out­lets. We have seen a sig­nif­i­cant take up on the prod­uct." Con­sumers can now en­joy a lo­cal menu of sweet pota­to fries from the pop­u­lar fast food restau­rant KFC. In ad­di­tion to pota­to fries, KFC will now be serv­ing sweet pota­to fries in four of its out­lets from to­day, but the lo­cal­ly grown sweet pota­to would be ac­ces­si­ble in oth­er out­lets on a phased ba­sis. On Ju­ly 20, Bharath launched sweet pota­to fries as part of a na­tion­al cam­paign to pro­mote food se­cu­ri­ty in T&T, at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's. It cost just un­der $1mil­lion and was knit­ted to the Gov­ern­ment's man­date to pro­mote buy­ing and eat­ing lo­cal­ly pro­duced items.

An­oth­er agri­cul­tur­al mile­stone would be the dis­tri­b­u­tion of "4,000 acres of land for agri­cul­ture". Bharath said: "It is the largest ever in the his­to­ry of T&T. That would open up the win­dow for the pro­duc­tion of lo­cal food. Pro­mot­ing Buy Lo­cal goes hand in hand with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of land." Touch­ing on the peren­ni­al flood­ing prob­lem, Bharath said: "There has been no sig­nif­i­cant amount of com­pen­sa­tion be­cause there has been lit­tle flood­ing."

Char­i­ty be­gins at home

Bharath said one of the most im­por­tant in­ter­ven­tions is serv­ing more lo­cal foods from the cor­nu­copia of fruits and veg­eta­bles. He cit­ed the ex­am­ple of the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme. Bharath said: "We serve about 150,000 meals per day. I have asked the lo­cal stake­hold­ers to en­sure there is more lo­cal con­tent." He said he had ap­proached Cab­i­net col­leagues like Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy to en­sure pris­on­ers are fed lo­cal pro­duce culled from lo­cal farms. At the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry's base, Bharath said they had tak­en a de­ci­sion to en­sure in­dige­nous foods like fruits and veg­eta­bles are served at func­tions.

He said: "I am urg­ing all of my Cab­i­net col­leagues to adopt the same ap­proach." He even paid ku­dos to Trinidad and To­ba­go Agri-busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (Ta­ba) for "a won­der­ful bread". "It is made with 45 per cent cas­sa­va flour. If we can sub­sti­tute half of the wheat we im­port with cas­sa­va we would cut im­ports down by hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars. "Corn is utilised for chick­en feed. We could cut im­ports amount­ing to mil­lions of dol­lars. What has nev­er ex­ist­ed be­fore is the will to get it done."

'Gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty' for Cari­com ex­ports

Bharath not­ed if T&T farm­ers' green thumbs pro­duced fruits and veg­eta­bles in abun­dance, the ex­cess could be ex­port­ed to coun­tries in the Caribbean. He said: "If we grow more we are go­ing to find ex­port mar­kets. The Cari­com re­gion im­ports US$4 bil­lion of food per an­num. It presents T&T farm­ers with a gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty."

He added: "I know they im­port pep­pers from Cos­ta Ri­ca. We would have to find a mar­ket if we grow a lot more than we need for lo­cal con­sump­tion. Once the farm­ers un­der­stand the ship­ping mar­ket, they could tar­get the Cari­com mar­kets. Then, they could tap in­to in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets." On the flip side, Bharath un­der­stood chal­lenges in cul­ti­vat­ing "a gar­den of Eden". He said: "At the same time, we have to be care­ful if we don't have peo­ple to buy it. The farm­ers would lose monies and be­come dis­en­chant­ed. We have to be care­ful what we do if all of the food comes on board."

$1.9 bil­lion for agri­cul­ture

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an al­lo­cat­ed $1.9 bil­lion to the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in the 2012 bud­get. Bharath said: "It's the same amount of mon­ey that was giv­en last year. It's a ques­tion of how we utilise the funds. Al­though we ap­plied for a lot more, we will make sure that what we got we will car­ry on the work we start­ed last year. "The bud­get state­ments are broad on pol­i­cy. Each sec­tor has to drill down in­to how we are go­ing to spend the mon­ey. Things may have been al­lo­cat­ed to cer­tain heads and we will move it around. Last year, we were al­lo­cat­ed $500,000 to re­fur­nish 12 fish­ing sites at the cost of $18 mil­lion.

"Had we said we on­ly had $500,000, we have been able to mar­shal the re­sources. We know that we ap­plied for a lot more. But we al­so un­der­stand there are com­pet­ing in­ter­ests in the econ­o­my. I guar­an­tee we will get $4 bil­lion out of it be­cause of how we con­duct our af­fairs." In a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view, when quizzed on the im­pe­tus to­ward agri­cul­ture, Bharath said: "We have em­barked up­on a plan of ac­tion that we can­not go back on. A larg­er por­tion is al­lo­cat­ed to agri­cul­ture. When one looks across the world, (the agri­cul­ture) agen­da has been el­e­vat­ed to the top and T&T is no dif­fer­ent. Food pro­duc­tion went to num­ber one. Maslow's hi­er­ar­chy states food is one of the ma­jor pre­req­ui­sites of mankind."

Draft of agri­cul­tur­al in­cen­tives

• En­cour­age some form of sub­sti­tu­tion for im­port­ed wheat and corn

• Con­cen­trate on non-tra­di­tion­al crops; ex­per­i­ment with onions and car­rots

• Ex­per­i­ment with items like mo­lasses and fish waste (de­tri­tus) to pro­duce food

• Grow­ing toma­toes for ketchup

• Dis­cus­sions with the pri­vate sec­tor

• Var­i­ous in­cen­tives for agro pro­cess­ing, se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures and tech­nol­o­gy

• Es­tab­lish­ment of 300 ir­ri­ga­tion ponds; wa­ter is ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial to agri­cul­ture

• Hopes to es­tab­lish 2,000 ir­ri­ga­tion ponds with­in five year pe­ri­od

• Mas­sive clean up in­volv­ing drains and wa­ter­ways to fa­cil­i­tate run off

• De­vel­op­ing 250 kilo­me­tres of ac­cess roads; farm­ers no longer have to trudge through tracks with pro­duce on their backs

• Con­struc­tion of four large pack­ing hous­es to store pro­duce

• En­cour­ag­ing young peo­ple to get in­volved in farm­ing; most farm­ers are el­der­ly.

Bharath iden­ti­fied it as among the key in­ter­ven­tions be­cause "farm­ers nev­er en­cour­aged their chil­dren to get in­to agri­cul­ture. They have been farm­ing with the same tech­niques. "Each year we have de­cid­ed to take 15 new grad­u­ates from UWI and UTT and put them through an in­ten­sive pro­gramme so they could gain prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge. "There would be a fresh crop of pi­o­neers."