If the pro­posed ini­tia­tive in To­ba­go to trans­form ca­su­al labour un­der the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) in­to or­gan­ised food pro­duc­tion is pur­sued with se­ri­ous­ness, the na­tion could take an im­por­tant step to­ward food self-suf­fi­cien­cy.

Fi­nance Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Petal-Ann Roberts, has out­lined plans to shift the CEPEP pro­gramme to the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty. Mov­ing away from short-hour road­side main­te­nance work to­ward sus­tained agri­cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ty rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant and long-over­due shift to­ward pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Be­yond boost­ing food sup­ply, this ini­tia­tive ad­dress­es a deep­er struc­tur­al is­sue. For decades, seg­ments of the work­force have been ab­sorbed in­to pro­grammes that, while so­cial­ly nec­es­sary at their in­cep­tion, have grad­u­al­ly drift­ed to­ward un­der­em­ploy­ment. Redi­rect­ing this labour in­to gen­uine eco­nom­ic pro­duc­tion can re­shape work cul­ture, im­prove out­put and strength­en na­tion­al re­silience.

These pro­grammes date back to the ear­ly 1960s un­der Dr Er­ic Williams, who sought to pro­vide in­come op­por­tu­ni­ties for those on the fringes of so­ci­ety. Over time, how­ev­er, they have been crit­i­cised for fos­ter­ing de­pen­den­cy. Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment stal­wart Fer­die Fer­reira’s de­scrip­tion of par­tic­i­pants as “vot­er banks” re­flects a pat­tern that has per­sist­ed across ad­min­is­tra­tions, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.

The THA’s pro­pos­al to utilise state lands for or­gan­ised farm­ing, in­clud­ing the de­vel­op­ment of large-scale agri­cul­tur­al op­er­a­tions, of­fers a prac­ti­cal al­ter­na­tive. Mov­ing work­ers from in­ter­mit­tent, low-pro­duc­tiv­i­ty ac­tiv­i­ty in­to struc­tured food pro­duc­tion could help To­ba­go—and by ex­ten­sion Trinidad —re­duce its heavy re­liance on im­port­ed food.

This shift al­so speaks to a long-stand­ing weak­ness in the re­gion’s tourism in­dus­try, where a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of earn­ings leaks abroad through food im­ports. Ex­pand­ing lo­cal agri­cul­ture would al­low more of the tourism dol­lar to cir­cu­late do­mes­ti­cal­ly, ben­e­fit­ing farm­ers, agro-proces­sors and the wider econ­o­my. At the same time, it presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op and pro­mote a more dis­tinc­tive lo­cal cui­sine, a key draw for vis­i­tors seek­ing au­then­tic Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ences.

Re­sis­tance is to be ex­pect­ed. Work­ers ac­cus­tomed to flex­i­ble rou­tines may find the de­mands of struc­tured agri­cul­tur­al labour chal­leng­ing. Yet, mean­ing­ful na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment re­quires ad­just­ment—both in work eth­ic and con­sump­tion pat­terns. Re­duc­ing food im­port de­pen­dence will de­mand not on­ly pol­i­cy changes but cul­tur­al shifts.

Suc­cess will de­pend heav­i­ly on pub­lic un­der­stand­ing and sup­port. A sus­tained in­for­ma­tion cam­paign is es­sen­tial to build na­tion­al aware­ness around food se­cu­ri­ty and the val­ue of redi­rect­ing labour in­to pro­duc­tive sec­tors. With­out this, even well-de­signed ini­tia­tives can fal­ter.

Equal­ly cru­cial is co-or­di­na­tion be­tween the THA and the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. Agri­cul­tur­al trans­for­ma­tion on this scale re­quires care­ful plan­ning, land al­lo­ca­tion, in­fra­struc­ture, fi­nanc­ing and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise. It must not be­come an­oth­er are­na for po­lit­i­cal con­tention but rather an op­por­tu­ni­ty for col­lab­o­ra­tive gov­er­nance.

The pro­pos­al to con­vert so­cial wel­fare labour in­to food pro­duc­tion is more than an ad­min­is­tra­tive ad­just­ment—it is a strate­gic piv­ot. If prop­er­ly ex­e­cut­ed, it can strength­en food se­cu­ri­ty, deep­en eco­nom­ic re­silience and re­de­fine the pur­pose of pub­lic labour pro­grammes in a way that ben­e­fits both To­ba­go and the wider na­tion.