One of the most sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges this coun­try faces is bal­anc­ing food se­cu­ri­ty with the need to gen­er­ate forex, says Chris­t­ian Young Sing, vice-chair­man of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce’s Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries (FSAF) stand­ing com­mit­tee.

He not­ed that, ac­cord­ing to da­ta com­piled by the Cham­ber from the CSO, World Bank and Cari­com, this coun­try im­ports a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of its food from ce­re­als and dairy to meat and veg­eta­bles, con­tribut­ing to a steadi­ly ris­ing food im­port bill.

It was al­so re­vealed dur­ing T&T’s 2025 na­tion­al bud­get that the coun­try’s food im­port bill re­mains high—es­ti­mat­ed at $7.3 bil­lion in 2022 and $7.2 bil­lion in 2023.

To mit­i­gate this in­creas­ing cost, Young Sing be­lieves the coun­try needs to fo­cus on lo­cal food pro­duc­tion to meet do­mes­tic de­mand while al­so iden­ti­fy­ing high-val­ue crops that can be ex­port­ed.

Not­ing that his­tor­i­cal­ly, T&T’s econ­o­my has been high­ly de­pen­dent on en­er­gy ex­ports, leav­ing it vul­ner­a­ble to the volatil­i­ty of glob­al oil and gas mar­kets, he ad­vised that a ro­bust agri­cul­tur­al ex­port strat­e­gy, along­side food se­cu­ri­ty ef­forts, can pro­vide an es­sen­tial eco­nom­ic buffer.

The cham­ber’s rec­om­men­da­tions for the 2025 fis­cal year re­flect­ed this ap­proach.

One of the key sug­ges­tions was to sim­pli­fy the process for ac­cess­ing tax ex­emp­tions and in­cen­tives, al­low­ing more farm­ers to ben­e­fit and ex­pand their op­er­a­tions.

More­over, the cham­ber stressed, tar­get­ed in­cen­tives could sup­port mod­ern farm­ing tech­niques, such as hy­dro­pon­ics and aquapon­ics, which al­low for high-yield food pro­duc­tion even in ur­ban ar­eas with lim­it­ed land.

The Re­view of the Econ­o­my 2024 doc­u­ment showed that com­po­si­tion of food pro­duc­tion over the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2023 to March 2024, in­di­cat­ing that veg­eta­bles re­mained the largest cat­e­go­ry of food crop pro­duced, ac­count­ing for 44.3 per cent of to­tal food crop pro­duc­tion, fol­lowed by root crops (33.7 per cent).

With­in the veg­eta­bles cat­e­go­ry, let­tuce emerged as the most sig­nif­i­cant crop, ac­count­ing for 13.0 per cent of to­tal veg­etable pro­duc­tion and 5.8 per cent of to­tal food crop pro­duc­tion.

Root crops, the sec­ond largest con­trib­u­tor to to­tal food crop pro­duc­tion, con­tin­ued to play a crit­i­cal role in the over­all food crop pro­duc­tion.

The ma­jor con­trib­u­tors to root crop pro­duc­tion in­clud­ed dasheen (35.5 per cent); cas­sa­va (31.2 per cent); ed­does (21.9 per cent); and sweet pota­to (11.4 per cent).

As it per­tains to iden­ti­fy­ing ex­portable agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts, Young Sing fur­ther rec­om­mend­ed that se­lect­ing the right crops for ex­port is cru­cial to de­vel­op­ing a forex-gen­er­at­ing agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

He not­ed that durable prod­ucts and val­ue-added goods are par­tic­u­lar­ly well suit­ed for in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, cit­ing that, for ex­am­ple, processed agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts such as pack­aged spices, jams, and frozen fruits of­fer longer shelf lives and greater re­silience in tran­sit, mak­ing them ide­al for ex­port.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, crops like cas­sa­va, yams, man­goes, and cit­rus fruits are well suit­ed to with­stand trans­porta­tion and have con­sid­er­able mar­ket po­ten­tial, he said.

Agro pro­cess­ing is an­oth­er area ripe for de­vel­op­ment.

Young Sing ex­plained that the trans­for­ma­tion of raw agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts in­to high­er-val­ue goods could sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hance T&T’s ex­port port­fo­lio.

The cham­ber’s sug­ges­tion to low­er land-leas­ing fees for farm­ers tran­si­tion­ing to agro-pro­cess­ing al­so re­flect­ed the need for poli­cies that en­cour­age di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion with­in the sec­tor.

If these fac­tors are to be ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive, em­brac­ing tech­nol­o­gy and cli­mate re­silience is key.

“Tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion is key to mak­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s agri­cul­ture glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive. Cli­mate-re­silient tech­niques, such as the use of green­hous­es and ad­vanced ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems, can help lo­cal farm­ers in­crease yields and ex­tend grow­ing sea­sons. Green­hous­es pro­tect crops from er­rat­ic weath­er pat­terns, while drip ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems en­sure wa­ter ef­fi­cien­cy in a coun­try fac­ing mount­ing wa­ter scarci­ty is­sues,” Young Sing ex­plained.

He fur­ther not­ed that the glob­al wa­ter cri­sis, ex­ac­er­bat­ed by cli­mate change, is a key dri­ver for re­shap­ing the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor world­wide.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port by the Glob­al Com­mis­sion on the Eco­nom­ics of Wa­ter, half of the world’s food pro­duc­tion is at risk due to wors­en­ing wa­ter short­ages, and by 2030, glob­al wa­ter de­mand will ex­ceed sup­ply by 40 per cent.

T&T is not im­mune to these chal­lenges.

Agri­cul­ture in this coun­try must adapt to in­creas­ing­ly un­pre­dictable rain­fall and re­duced wa­ter avail­abil­i­ty, Young Sing said, adding that this cri­sis al­so presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­no­vate and re­think tra­di­tion­al farm­ing meth­ods, mak­ing them more re­silient and ef­fi­cient.

How­ev­er, up­grades come at a cost, re­quir­ing sub­stan­tial in­vest­ments.

To make these in­no­va­tions ac­ces­si­ble, pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships are cru­cial.

Call­ing on Gov­ern­ment and in­dus­try stake­hold­ers to work to­geth­er to en­sure ac­cess to crit­i­cal re­sources such as elec­tric­i­ty, wa­ter, and fi­nanc­ing for farm­ers, Young Sing said one pro­posed mea­sure is to align re­bate per­cent­ages and max­i­mum lim­its for agri­cul­tur­al equip­ment with the ac­tu­al costs of op­er­at­ing in the sec­tor, help­ing farm­ers af­ford mod­ern tech­nolo­gies.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the cham­ber sug­gest­ed that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of agri­cul­tur­al in­sur­ance, par­tic­u­lar­ly for high-val­ue com­modi­ties like co­coa and cof­fee, is an­oth­er key rec­om­men­da­tion.

This, it said would pro­tect, farm­ers against the risks posed by cli­mate change, en­cour­ag­ing in­vest­ment in com­pet­i­tive crops and en­sur­ing more con­sis­tent pro­duc­tion.

The Cham­ber em­pha­sised that the path to trans­form­ing agri­cul­ture in­to a forex-gen­er­at­ing pow­er­house re­quires both pol­i­cy re­form and in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture and tech­nol­o­gy, adding that T&T’s agri­cul­tur­al po­ten­tial is vast, but struc­tur­al is­sues like land tenure, out­dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture, and the com­plex ap­pli­ca­tion process for tax in­cen­tives must be ad­dressed for the sec­tor to thrive.

It fur­ther main­tained that re­gion­al trade in food prod­ucts is a cru­cial step in ad­dress­ing this coun­try’s high food im­port bill, adding that re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion of­fers an op­por­tu­ni­ty for greater ac­cess to a va­ri­ety of prod­ucts like ac­k­ee, which is hard to find lo­cal­ly, or cas­sa­va flour from Guyana, which could be more wide­ly used and by fos­ter­ing stronger trade links with­in Cari­com, T&T can re­duce de­pen­dence on im­ports from North Amer­i­ca and sup­port re­gion­al economies.

In the 2025 bud­get, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert out­lined that food se­cu­ri­ty is high on the Gov­ern­ment’s agen­da and said the Gov­ern­ment is ac­tive­ly seek­ing to ex­pand agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion. Im­bert said the Min­istry Agri­cul­ture, Lands and Fish­eries would re­ceive $1.184 bil­lion for the 2025 fi­nan­cial year.

Im­bert al­so as­sured that to con­tribute to Cari­com’s goal to re­duce food im­ports by 25 per cent by 2025, Gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary sup­port to boost pro­duc­tion in key sub­sec­tors in­clud­ing co­coa, live­stock, fish­eries, rice, cof­fee and co­conuts and ad­dress­ing chal­lenges such as qual­i­ty plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al, pest mit­i­ga­tion and in­ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties as well as fo­cus­ing on forestry de­vel­op­ment, in­fra­struc­ture en­hance­ment and agro-pro­cess­ing with Namde­v­co mod­ernising mar­kets for lo­cal­ly pro­duced fruits and veg­eta­bles.