Like their coun­ter­parts across the coun­try, Plum Mi­tan farm­ers face a list of is­sues and chal­lenges in agri­cul­ture. At the top of that list is land tenure; the catch-22 is that the bu­reau­cra­cy of not hav­ing this vi­tal re­quire­ment is an im­ped­i­ment to ac­cess­ing loans and the tax-free in­cen­tives giv­en to the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. Oth­er ob­sta­cles are flood­ing, the three pumps ser­vic­ing the area at the junc­tion of the Cross Line and Main Line Rivers are over 30 years, ob­so­lete and non-func­tion­ing. The riv­er cours­es are cov­ered with aquat­ic weeds and in dire need of clean­ing. They have to con­tend with poor ac­cess roads, lack of wa­ter for ir­ri­ga­tion dur­ing the dry sea­son, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny and mul­ti­ple pests and dis­eases af­fect­ing live­stock and crops.

Po­lit­i­cal par­ties have been sow­ing seeds by pitch­ing that agri­cul­ture is of para­mount im­por­tance to the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my in a bid to reap the har­vest of votes in the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Back in 2018 Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said T&T did not have enough land for agri­cul­ture. That same year the Gov­ern­ment turned the sod to start con­struc­tion of the $90 mil­lion Moru­ga agro-pro­cess­ing plant. On Ju­ly 14 Row­ley of­fi­cial­ly opened the fa­cil­i­ty (lo­cat­ed on 18.83 acres of land) and said that the Gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties will gen­er­ate thou­sands of jobs, in­crease food sup­ply and im­prove food se­cu­ri­ty in the coun­try.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has demon­strat­ed world­wide the im­por­tance of coun­tries pro­duc­ing food to feed their peo­ple. With the hoard­ing of sup­plies and the re­lat­ed food short­ages, sev­er­al coun­tries had lim­it­ed ex­ports of sta­ples such as rice and wheat to pro­tect do­mes­tic sup­plies.

It is al­so a for­mi­da­ble task for any gov­ern­ment to re­duce the coun­try's bur­geon­ing $6 bil­lion (TT) food im­port bill.

In the 1950s a 1,000-acre Gov­ern­ment State Land project, the Plum Mi­tan Rice Scheme, was de­vel­oped. This was the fore­sight of the late first prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams, and the ob­jec­tive was to ben­e­fit the in­hab­i­tants of the vil­lage. Even to­day, over 90 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion de­pends on this project for their liveli­hood.

While the rest of the coun­try ex­pe­ri­ences a short­age of young peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in farm­ing–of the 300 farm­ers ac­tive­ly in­volved in agri­cul­ture in the vil­lage, there are over 100 young farm­ers in Plum Mi­tan un­der the age of 35.

The scheme set up by Dr Williams was one of many rice projects de­vel­oped dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s along with Fish­ing Pond, Navet, Rio Claro, Ker­rna­han, Oropouche, Bar­rack­pore, Pe­nal, Fe­lic­i­ty and Ca­roni.

At one point, Plum Mi­tan boast­ed of be­ing one of the largest rice pro­duc­ers in the coun­try. The vil­lage was al­so known as the food bas­ket of East-Cen­tral, pro­duc­ing wa­ter­mel­on, plan­tain, cu­cum­bers and a va­ri­ety of oth­er crops.

Dood­nath Ram­jawan, 84, said Plum Mi­tan was self-suf­fi­cient in rice and oth­er crops even dur­ing the ra­tion-card era of World War II.

He said "When peo­ple used up their por­tion of rice, peo­ple used to come and buy rice from my fa­ther in the 40s. He sold rice at $3 a pan, that was plen­ty mon­ey back then.

"We al­so plant­ed dasheen, co­coa, cof­fee, cu­cum­ber, wa­ter­mel­on, pump­kin and pep­per. We made our own sug­ar cane juice and built the ma­chine too.

"My fa­ther reared an­i­mals, we al­ways had cow milk. My moth­er, Bhag­manyah and my wife, Mol­ly, made dahi, ghee, co­conut oil to sell and com­mon fowl eggs."

David Grimes, 24, a young farmer, said he drove all the way down from Mor­vant to buy plan­tain suck­ers on the ad­vice of his fa­ther who told him of the qual­i­ty of the farm­ers' pro­duce and their knowl­edge they will­ing­ly shared. He was very im­pressed.

Plum Mi­tan and agri­cul­ture may be more rel­e­vant with the COVID-19 cri­sis, as rice is one of the coun­try's main con­sump­tion sta­ples.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area to hear the farm­ers' con­cerns:

•Roooplal Ram­nanan, a farmer from Block 4 said his li­cence for work­ing on the land was not re­newed and his farmer's badge was ex­pired.

He said he was us­ing his re­ceipt to show that he was a farmer, but he can­not ac­cess a loan from the bank or the ADB and he was still wait­ing on his flood re­lief as­sis­tance for sev­er­al years.

Ram­nanan said his bo­di, baigan and cu­cum­ber crops ei­ther fell to thieves or ro­dents. He al­so want­ed an ex­ca­va­tor to re­main in the la­goon to dredge the riv­er.

He said there was a sym­bi­ot­ic re­la­tion­ship with rice farm­ers when their fields were ir­ri­gat­ed with fresh­wa­ter that al­so brought cas­cadu­ra which he sold along with conch to make a liv­ing in the past.

•A caiman was spot­ted in the al­gae-choked riv­er near 21-year-old Ian Ros­tant's farm. While they are pro­tect­ed they pose a dan­ger to farm­ers' chick­ens and dogs.

He said mice and slugs were at­tack­ing his crops and his wa­ter pump had to be cleaned reg­u­lar­ly from the buildup of slush in the riv­er.

Ros­tant said he did ma­son­ry to sup­ple­ment his gar­den work. He was now fo­cus­ing his ef­forts on rear­ing pigs, ducks and cas­cadoo which are now scarce.

•Avin Ros­tant said farm­ers had to con­tend with the ter­ri­ble con­di­tion of roads lead­ing from their farms all the way to the Nor­ris De­onar­ine North­ern Whole­sale Mar­ket, Ma­coya, sus­tain­ing dam­age to their ve­hi­cles and crops, and then be­ing paid low mar­ket prices for their pro­duce.

He said the ad­ja­cent riv­er was cleaned re­cent­ly but it was now filled with al­gae, and there was al­so over-fish­ing of the fresh-wa­ter fish us­ing fish-traps.

•Ra­jish Dookhie said he lost 15 of his cat­tle and bi­son to bats drain­ing their blood last year.

He said he was al­so los­ing his crops to mice and white­flies, but no help was forth­com­ing.

•Ash­mead Ali said he lost ten cat­tle to bats and no one from the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture's an­ti-ra­bies unit Rio Claro Demon­stra­tion Sta­tion came out at night to do field test­ing. He said in lieu of this, farm­ers should be trained to use equip­ment to catch the bats and tak­en to the an­ti-ra­bies unit.

•Naresh Ramkissoon said Blocks 1, 2 and 3 had easy ac­cess to wa­ter and pumps while for those farm­ers in Block 4, it was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. He said while slugs ate their plants, many farm­ers sol­diered on with ex­pired state lands agri­cul­tur­al li­cences and can­not re­new their farmer's card or ac­cess in­cen­tives.

•Heera­man Christo­pher said the price of chem­i­cals, no stan­dard price for farm­ers in the whole­sale mar­ket, wa­ter and ir­ri­ga­tion were his chief con­cerns.

He said fluc­tu­at­ing prices, field hands pay, trans­port, fer­tilis­ers and chem­i­cals were ex­pen­sive, flood re­lief grants were in­ad­e­quate com­pen­sa­tion or next to noth­ing.

Christo­pher said a farmer can­not get a loan from the ADB if he had no col­lat­er­al or de­posit.

He said farm­ers need­ing a pass to sell in the Cen­tral Mar­ket was a dis­in­cen­tive, and that the Ma­coya mar­ket mod­el should be copied where every­one is charged a flat fee to sell.

•Su­ru­j­nar­ine "Buck" Hanooman, vice pres­i­dent of Plum Mi­tan Cen­tral Com­mu­ni­ty Based Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CBO) said em­ploy­ment was an is­sue in Plum Mi­tan. How­ev­er, vi­o­lent crime was non-ex­is­tent as ev­i­denced by many hous­es hav­ing no bur­glar proof­ing, the com­mu­ni­ty looked out for one an­oth­er. Hanooman said the Nar­i­va Swamp had so many re­sources and po­ten­tial for eco-tourism with its di­verse wildlife which can play a key role in pro­vid­ing a liveli­hood to the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty and for gen­er­a­tions in the fu­ture.

Farm­ers are ap­peal­ing to the Gov­ern­ment to as­sist them. As the coun­try en­ters the rainy sea­son with un­pre­dictable weath­er and the bane of farm­ers–flood­ing–they are plead­ing with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to clear the Main Line Riv­er flow­ing to the Nar­i­va Riv­er.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter re­sponds

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat, re­spond­ing to the con­cerns raised by the farm­ers, said "Land tenure is a na­tion­al is­sue, and we have been work­ing to get the back­log re­solved. The in­cen­tives are avail­able and ac­ces­si­ble to farm­ers who meet the re­quire­ments.

"The wa­ter is­sues are ad­dressed as they arise by our En­gi­neer­ing Di­vi­sion.

"It is well known that there is one farmer who has a land is­sue that is in court and pur­ports to speak on be­half of Plum Mi­tan."