Gov­ern­ment's al­lo­ca­tion to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture which moved from $1.9 bil­lion in the 2011/2012 bud­get to a mere $546 mil­lion in the 2017/2018 fis­cal pack­age, re­flects a dras­tic drop in the amount Gov­ern­ment is will­ing to spend in this min­istry.

An ex­am­i­na­tion of bud­gets from 2010-2011 to 2019/2020 be­tween the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship regime and the cur­rent Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion showed a de­crease in al­lo­ca­tion over the years:

*When the PP gov­ern­ment as­sumed of­fice in 2015 and pre­sent­ed its first bud­get un­der then fi­nance min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, the min­istry re­ceived $1.8 bil­lion–the fifth-largest slice of the coun­try's fis­cal pack­age.

Min­istries such as ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing, health, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and works and trans­port were giv­en the li­on's share.

*The fol­low­ing year, the bud­get in­creased slight­ly to $1.9 bil­lion, which has been the largest sum it re­ceived to date.

*In the 2012/2013, 2013/2014 and 2014/ 2015 bud­gets, the min­istry col­lect­ed $1.3 bil­lion for each year un­der then fi­nance min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai.

When the gov­ern­ment changed hands in Sep­tem­ber 2015, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert stat­ed that the PP had maxed out our over­draft at the Cen­tral Bank, tak­ing us from a cash flow po­si­tion in 2010 to a per­ilous state.

As a re­sult, the Gov­ern­ment had to cut back on over­all spend­ing and slashed bud­get al­lo­ca­tions in all min­istries.

*The Agri­cul­ture Min­istry had to set­tle for $0.831 bil­lion in the 2015/2016 bud­get, a far cry from what they were ac­cus­tomed re­ceiv­ing.

*The fig­ure then dropped to $0.766 bil­lion in the 2016/2017 fis­cal pack­age.

*In the 2017/2018 bud­get, the min­istry saw a fur­ther cut and re­ceived on­ly $0.546 bil­lion.

*Things im­proved in 2018/2019 as the min­istry was al­lo­cat­ed $0.780 bil­lion.

*In the 2019/2020 bud­get, the min­istry's al­lo­ca­tion was slashed again, tak­ing the fig­ure to $0.708 bil­lion.

For years, the sec­tor has been suf­fer­ing from the same ills–lip ser­vice by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments and ne­glect, de­creas­ing bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions, flood­ing, droughts, high cost of in­puts, in­suf­fi­cient and poor ac­cess roads, in­ad­e­quate re­ten­tion ponds, lack of land tenure se­cu­ri­ty, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, labour short­ages and lack of fi­nanc­ing among oth­er is­sues. These is­sues have at­trib­uted to a wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion in the area of food pro­duc­tion and a ris­ing bil­lion-dol­lar food im­port bill.

For­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath ad­mit­ted that every gov­ern­ment has paid lip ser­vice to the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, in­clud­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship regime of which he was a part.

"And when they (re­spec­tive gov­ern­ments) get in­to of­fice it's a dif­fer­ent sto­ry."

In 2011 while Bharath was serv­ing as agri­cul­ture min­is­ter, he led a march with farm­ers whose crops were bull­dozed in Ch­agua­nas by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion to make way for homes.

The PP gov­ern­ment, he said, had promised to ad­dress farm­ing woes frontal­ly and re­neged on it. Stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the farm­ers al­most got him "fired", he said. "This was a gov­ern­ment one would have thought would have sup­port­ed farm­ers."

Why have suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments ne­glect­ed agri­cul­ture?

Bharath said it was not viewed as glam­ourous.

But he be­lives that "it makes sense on every lev­el to sup­port agri­cul­ture...to save for­eign ex­change and to cre­ate food se­cu­ri­ty and jobs."

Now, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has brought to the fore the food in­se­cu­ri­ty that ex­ists as many coun­tries have al­ready start­ed a lev­el of pro­tec­tion­ism by keep­ing the food which they grow for their own use.

"We could well be out of cer­tain items. The is­sue is how do we cre­ate food se­cu­ri­ty for the na­tion which has to be front and cen­tre of every­body's minds," Bharath said.

"What COVID-19 has done is to raise the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the na­tion for us to grow more of our own food and be less de­pen­dent on oth­er coun­tries to pro­vide it for us."

Bharath said if we should face a sec­ond wave of the pan­dem­ic, this could re­sult in break­ages in the sup­ply chain.

The pan­dem­ic has now be­come "a huge wake-up call for us" in ob­tain­ing food se­cu­ri­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Last month, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ap­point­ed a 23-mem­ber post-COVID-19 Road Map to Re­cov­ery team to deal with the painful eco­nom­ic and so­cial im­pacts–in­clud­ing a limp­ing agri­cul­ture sec­tor–from the virus.

Bharath, who joined the com­mit­tee, has been man­dat­ed by Row­ley to fo­cus on re­build­ing the agri­cul­ture sec­tor which has been ne­glect­ed by gov­ern­ments for years.

While gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and tech­nocrats have said that T&T has a guar­an­teed six-month food sup­ply, pol­i­cy­mak­ers have un­der­scored the im­por­tance of pri­ori­tis­ing and re­vi­tal­is­ing do­mes­tic agri­cul­ture pro­duc­tion.

Bharath ad­mit­ted that T&T does not have a prob­lem with food se­cu­ri­ty be­cause we im­port about 80 per cent of the food we eat. How­ev­er, he said in the event of a pro­longed shut­down which af­fects sup­plies due to geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions and virus­es, T&T could be placed in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion.

'Ex­pect an in­crease in al­lo­ca­tion for agri­cul­ture'

Com­ment­ing on the 2019/2020 bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion of $708 mil­lion, Bharath said if the Gov­ern­ment were to slash the bud­get in the 2020/2021 fis­cal pack­age it would be very dif­fi­cult for the sec­tor to sur­vive.

"With the work of the com­mit­tee, the Gov­ern­ment would in­crease the amount sim­ply be­cause there are a lot of rec­om­men­da­tions I am hope­ful that would come out of the com­mit­tee that will im­prove food pro­duc­tion."

Bharath, who said all was not lost, as­sured that the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty would see "a pos­i­tive im­pact with­in a space of three to six months."

While he kept the work of the com­mit­tee close to his chest, Bharath said its "man­date says that we ought to be­come a food se­cure na­tion as we pos­si­bly can. We would have to ramp up food pro­duc­tion."

He said we have the tech­nol­o­gy to in­crease pro­duc­tion lev­el five folds in a very short space of time, while we have suf­fi­cient land to plant.

He said the biggest chal­lenge for the sec­tor and farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty was bu­reau­cra­cy.

"That has al­ways been the is­sue. That will be the biggest chal­lenge. That is some­thing that is en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the com­mit­tee."

Dur­ing his tenure, Bharath had pre­sent­ed a food pro­duc­tion re­port which tar­get­ed the ramp­ing up of spe­cif­ic crops to help cut back on our $7 bil­lion food im­port bill.

That re­port, he said, was still rel­e­vant to food se­cu­ri­ty to­day.

"To some ex­tent, we will be us­ing that as a base doc­u­ment."

He said our dwin­dling for­eign re­serves was a sec­ond-tier project the com­mit­tee will ex­am­ine.

"If you are grow­ing more food then you would have less de­pen­dence on im­port­ed prod­ucts so, there­fore, our for­eign re­serves bill will go down. The most im­por­tant thing is to in­stil con­fi­dence in the pop­u­la­tion that we can be food se­cure."

We need a food se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy: Dr Sharon Hutchin­son

Mean­while, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er on food and re­source eco­nom­ics Dr Sharon Hutchin­son said T&T must es­tab­lish a food se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy to en­sure our coun­try's sur­vival.

She said it was nec­es­sary be­cause "when COVID-19 hit we did not have any struc­ture to re­spond."

Ac­cord­ing to Hutchin­son, "it is just a hit and miss with farm­ers go­ing to pro­duce with­out know­ing the mar­ket en­vi­ron­ment."

She said we have col­lapsed in the area of da­ta col­lec­tion and mon­i­tor­ing, while there was no co­or­di­nat­ing mech­a­nism to avoid du­pli­ca­tion of crops.

"We need da­ta to dri­ve a lot of de­ci­sions and it is not be­ing col­lect­ed. Even to in­form pol­i­cy we are be­ing hin­dered. We have no food se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy there­fore, no­body is man­dat­ed to do this."

Hutchin­son said this was most wor­ry­ing as lack of in­for­ma­tion has led us to a guess­ing game with food sup­plies.

"But the big­ger chal­lenge for me is the in­sta­bil­i­ty and risks in pro­duc­tion. There are ba­sic things that could al­low our in­dus­try to grow that we don't have. We have been food in­se­cure for a very long time and COVID-19 just made it worse."

She said the virus caused a lot of peo­ple to pan­ic and raise con­cerns about whether we could feed our­selves should coun­tries we im­port from close its bor­ders.

The shut­down did not ma­te­ri­alise, but it did not mean we are more food se­cure. "We are more food in­se­cure be­cause in­comes have been lost," Hutchin­son said.

She said it would all de­pend on how fast the agri­cul­ture sec­tor can get farm­ers on the ground to pro­duce ad­di­tion­al crops if coun­tries refuse to sup­ply us food.

"In the short run, we might be in a bad sit­u­a­tion. In the medi­um to long term, we can re­cov­er par­tial­ly. Most like­ly we might have to change how we eat."

While coun­tries have been mak­ing ad­vance­ments in agri­cul­ture, Hutchin­son said we are go­ing back­wards.

"I think agri­cul­ture is not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly be­cause it does not con­tribute as large a pie to the GDP."

We don't need anec­do­tal, piece­meal con­ver­sa­tions–Omar­dath Ma­haraj

Agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj be­lieves any con­ver­sa­tion to ad­dress food se­cu­ri­ty in the face of the glob­al pan­dem­ic must not be anec­do­tal and piece­meal.

"We must be mind­ful of the his­to­ry of ne­glect of this sec­tor. If there is a de­sire to ad­dress food se­cu­ri­ty for T&T in the face of a glob­al pan­dem­ic, we are in grave dan­ger if the con­ver­sa­tions are anec­do­tal and piece­meal."

Past and present gov­ern­ments, Ma­haraj said, have been slow in ad­dress­ing the need for more cap­i­tal in­vest­ment, im­prov­ing ir­ri­ga­tion, drainage, seeds, breed­ing stocks, germplasm and pol­i­cy re­form.

"I have con­tend­ed that there must be a fun­da­men­tal shift in the sec­tor’s pri­or­i­ty, rais­ing it on the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment agen­da which is to be sup­port­ed by an over­ar­ch­ing na­tion­al pol­i­cy frame­work for sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture.

"What we should be get­ting from the Prime Min­is­ter is the ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms in agri­cul­ture and oth­er port­fo­lios. We should be told if we are go­ing to de­pend on lo­cal farm­ers and agri­cul­ture dur­ing and af­ter the pan­dem­ic with all that is hap­pen­ing to cause tur­moil in glob­al food sys­tems."

He said with­out know­ing where our food comes from, how it is pro­duced, re­spect­ing the cir­cum­stances of the men and women who work to feed us, we would not ap­pre­ci­ate how se­ri­ous food se­cu­ri­ty plan­ning be­comes for a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state with very con­strict­ed rev­enue streams.

Ma­haraj said we must iden­ti­fy strate­gic pro­grammes, projects must be aligned to mea­sur­able out­comes and we must have the re­quired fi­nan­cial, hu­man and tech­ni­cal re­sources.

No less than $3 bil­lion should be al­lo­cat­ed for agri sec­tor–Sage­wan

No less than $3 bil­lion should be pumped in­to the agri­cul­ture sec­tor to en­sure its vi­a­bil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. This was the fig­ure giv­en by econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan in light of the Gov­ern­ment's de­clin­ing bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions over the years.

"Every year when we see the bud­get we are up in arms be­cause we ar­gue how can you on one hand speak food se­cu­ri­ty, agro-pro­cess­ing and its im­por­tance and then when it comes to al­lo­cat­ing the mon­ey, in this par­tic­u­lar ad­min­is­tra­tion, has been re­duc­ing the bud­get."

She said if we are se­ri­ous about agri­cul­ture its bud­get al­lo­ca­tion should be around $3 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly. Sage­wan said what's im­por­tant is what you do to en­able pro­duc­tion lev­els, con­tin­ued growth, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and vi­a­bil­i­ty.

"The is­sue of land tenure which has be­come a bu­reau­crat­ic im­ped­i­ment needs to be ad­dressed ur­gent­ly." The Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank which of­fers loans to farm­ers, she said, ought to be re­struc­tured and tar­get dri­ven.

"It can­not be busi­ness as usu­al. COVID has pro­vid­ed an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to see that."

Sage­wan al­so touched on our food im­port bill, stat­ing that things that are grown lo­cal­ly should not be im­port­ed to al­low lo­cal pro­duc­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pete on a lev­el play­ing field.

"Our small farm­ers can­not com­pete with the scale of pro­duc­tion tak­ing place in large coun­tries. It would seem that pol­i­cy­mak­ers are fear­ful of in­ter­fer­ing with the im­port­ing class who are pow­er­ful."

She said co­op­er­a­tives should be set up where farm­ers can com­pete with one an­oth­er and have an "eq­ui­ty share."

Box/Put this copy sep­a­rate//it speaks to what the farm­ers say

We're ig­nored, side­lined, ill-treat­ed–Sookoo

Pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T (ASTT) Dhanoo Sookoo be­lieves that COVID-19 came as a life­line to the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty and the agri­cul­ture sec­tor which is on the verge of tak­ing its fi­nal breath.

She said over the years farm­ers have been "ig­nored, side­lined and ill-treat­ed."

A cen­sus which was un­der­tak­en in 2009 es­ti­mat­ed T&T's farm­ing pop­u­la­tion at 40,000, which Sookoo said could be far less now.

Sookoo, through the ASTT, pre­sent­ed an agri­cul­tur­al ac­tion plan to the Road Map to Re­cov­ery com­mit­tee, which is in­tend­ed to breathe new life in­to the in­dus­try.

The plan rec­om­mend­ed short and medi­um-term mea­sures such as es­tab­lish­ing in­fra­struc­ture in 17 food bas­ket ar­eas, pro­vide food box­es to all food card re­cip­i­ents, utilise the army to pro­vide 24-hour pa­trol to farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties to tack­le prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, strength­en farm­ers' or­gan­i­sa­tions with clear man­dates, im­ple­ment im­me­di­ate leg­is­la­tion to sup­port an "eat lo­cal, buy lo­cal" cam­paign for the school feed­ing pro­gramme and de­ploy­ment of the min­istry of agri­cul­ture staff to work di­rect­ly with farm­ers in coun­ty of­fices.

Sookoo said the en­tire "sys­tem" in the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry need­ed re­vamp­ing and fix­ing since there were "square pegs in round holes."

"All the ex­port that is hap­pen­ing in the coun­try is pri­vate-sec­tor dri­ven. You have an en­gi­neer­ing unit in the min­istry cost­ing tax­pay­ers mil­lions every year and when we en­ter the dry sea­son farm­ers have no wa­ter to wet their crops. The first rain comes down in the wet sea­son is flood."

'Farm­ers the bas­tard child'

De­spite toil­ing dai­ly in the rain and sun to put food on the ta­ble for the na­tion, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Uni­fied Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan said farm­ers con­tin­ue to be treat­ed as "a bas­tard child."

He said their labour is of­ten tak­en for grant­ed and most times it's thank­less.

Khan was vent­ing about the strug­gle farm­ers face with lit­tle or no help from the Gov­ern­ment while com­pet­ing with im­porters for mar­ket share.

"Farm­ers are treat­ed as the bas­tard child of the coun­try. We have noth­ing to get ex­cept hard­ships and suf­fer­ing."

He said the im­por­ta­tion of an ar­ray of com­modi­ties was killing lo­cal pro­duc­tion and dri­ving farm­ers out of the sec­tor.

Khan said one prob­lem that has been ex­ist­ing among farm­ers was lack of or­gan­ised pro­duc­tion.

"The farmer in Ma­yaro don't know what the farmer in Pe­nal is plant­i­ng. And every­body do­ing their own thing. This should not be hap­pen­ing in this day and age? What we have a min­istry for?"

Hav­ing an abun­dance of one type of crop on the mar­ket re­sults in a glut, forc­ing farm­ers to sell their pro­duce for next to noth­ing.

He said wa­ter­mel­on which nor­mal­ly sells be­tween $3 to $4 a pound re­cent­ly re­tailed at $1.50 per pound due to a glut on the mar­ket.

"But it cost a farmer al­most $2.50 to pro­duce a pound of wa­ter­mel­on. So, the farmer ends up los­ing."

Khan, who rep­re­sents 130 farm­ers, said all gov­ern­ments have failed them. He said it was more prof­itable to cul­ti­vate mar­i­jua­na than food.

No re­sponse from Ramb­harat

On May 4, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat in a What­sApp mes­sage agreed to a sit-down in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on May 5 but had to can­cel due to a sit­ting of Sen­ate.

He, how­ev­er, promised on May 8 to mes­sage this re­porter when he was in a po­si­tion to speak but nev­er got around to do­ing so.

On May 11, Guardian Me­dia emailed a list of ques­tions to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture's man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions Do­minic Hinds, seek­ing a re­sponse from Ramb­harat.

On May 14, Hinds re­spond­ed, stat­ing that "the ques­tions are still to be re­viewed and a re­sponse will be forth­com­ing."

Up to yes­ter­day, the ques­tions re­mained unan­swered.