As the 2025 bud­get ap­proach­es, for­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath wants to see an im­prove­ment for farm­ers in ac­cess­ing fi­nanc­ing.

The Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture was al­lo­cat­ed $1.442 bil­lion for fis­cal 2024, com­pared to $1.3 bil­lion in 2023.

Out of the al­lo­ca­tion, farm­ers were giv­en $250 mil­lion in in­cen­tives and $150 mil­lion for in­fra­struc­ture in a bid to shore up food se­cu­ri­ty.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Bharath said farm­ers’ ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing has con­tin­ued to de­te­ri­o­rate over the last 10 years.

He in­di­cat­ed that many farm­ers still strug­gle to get leas­es that ex­pired 20 and 30 years ago.

Con­se­quent­ly, Bharath said with­out valid ti­tle to land, these farm­ers can­not ac­cess cred­it.

“As a re­sult, most farm­ers work on a cash ba­sis, from crop to crop, hav­ing to cope with the age-old prob­lems of flood­ing, drought, in­fra­struc­ture is­sues, fi­nanc­ing, high in­put costs, gluts, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, and se­cu­ri­ty of tenure. Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2010-2015, the Min­istry set up sev­er­al mo­bile units of the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank, that went out to farm­ers in rur­al ar­eas to as­sist with mi­cro­fi­nanc­ing, us­ing their crops as col­lat­er­al,” he ex­plained.

As it per­tains to the for­eign ex­change short­age, Bharath said the sec­tor can be used not just to save forex but al­so to gen­er­ate forex.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2010-2012, un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, he said the min­istry had iden­ti­fied sev­er­al crit­i­cal crops to cre­ate both food se­cu­ri­ty and food sov­er­eign­ty (pub­lished in the Na­tion­al Food Pro­duc­tion Ac­tion Plan 2012-2015).

The plan not on­ly iden­ti­fied crops but al­so pro­duc­tion tar­gets. The crops in­clud­ed:

• ↓Sta­ples eg; rice, sweet pota­toes, cas­sa­va, bread­fruit

• ↓Veg­eta­bles eg ; toma­toes, pep­pers, cu­cum­ber, pump­kin, me­l­on­gene, ochro, dasheen bush, and onions

• ↓Fruit eg; ba­nana, cir­rus, man­goes, pineap­ple, paw­paw

• ↓Live­stock eg sheep, goat, dairy, duck

• ↓Puls­es eg; pi­geon peas, bo­di, lentils.

Re­gard­ing forex earn­ers, Bharath not­ed the plan iden­ti­fied strate­gic crops like co­coa, hon­ey and hot pep­pers for the ex­port mar­ket.

In ad­di­tion, he high­light­ed that the Min­istry pro­duced a book­let ’In­vest­ment Op­por­tu­ni­ties in Agri­cul­ture’ to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion for en­tre­pre­neurs to ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in the de­vel­op­ment of the sec­tor.

Asked whether more mon­ey should be al­lo­cat­ed to the sec­tor, the for­mer min­is­ter said the is­sue is not one of mon­ey but of fo­cused ef­fort on the sec­tor and en­cour­ag­ing young en­tre­pre­neurs in­to agri­cul­ture.

On the is­sue of more tech­nol­o­gy use by farm­ers, Bharath said the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to pay lip ser­vice to the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and the pro­posed wide­spread use of tech­nol­o­gy.

“Farm­ing, like most en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tiv­i­ties, has been trans­formed by the use of tech­nol­o­gy world­wide. If we are to achieve greater pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty, not on­ly to meet lo­cal de­mands but to stave off im­port­ed com­pe­ti­tion, then we must adopt the best tech­no­log­i­cal so­lu­tions avail­able. The use of tech­nol­o­gy al­so en­cour­ages a younger gen­er­a­tion to in­vest time and ef­fort in the sec­tor,” he em­pha­sised.

Al­so, he iden­ti­fied that flood­ing needs to be ad­dressed as it con­tin­ues to be a per­ma­nent and peren­ni­al prob­lem for the coun­try as a whole but farm­ers in par­tic­u­lar.

“The gov­ern­ment has done vir­tu­al­ly noth­ing in the last nine years to ad­dress this cri­sis. Dur­ing my time as Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, we built 300 re­ten­tion ponds in agri­cul­tur­al ar­eas across the coun­try, with a plan to build a fur­ther 700 over a two-year pe­ri­od. There were al­so plans in place to build ‘com­mu­ni­ty’ ponds,” he added.

Shar­ing his per­spec­tive on the up­com­ing bud­get, agri­cul­ture con­sul­tant Riyadh Mo­hammed, said this coun­try’s agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor con­tributed less than 2 per cent of Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) over the last 5 years.

Mo­hammed said par­tic­u­lar ob­sta­cles to the sec­tor’s progress have been low­er in­vest­ment and stake­hold­er en­gage­ment.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the amount of food im­port­ed an­nu­al­ly has been ris­ing, with over $5 bil­lion in 2019–2021 and $7.3 bil­lion in 2022. One of the most im­por­tant parts of the pol­i­cy frame­work is to re­move all tax­es from the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try, es­pe­cial­ly if this sec­tor is said to be in our di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy.”

With all re­main­ing un­cer­tain­ties, omis­sions, and loop­holes in the leg­is­la­tion lead­ing to vary­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of what as­pects of agri­cul­ture are tax-free and what are not ad­dressed and reme­died, he not­ed that this spec­i­fied ob­jec­tive should be in­tend­ed to be ful­filled through a leg­isla­tive amend­ment by 2024.

“To make all of the sec­tor’s con­ces­sions, in­cen­tives, and re­bates—such as the fu­el re­im­burse­ment for fish­er­men—more rea­son­able and per­ti­nent, I would al­so like to see a re­view, up­date, and im­prove­ment done as need­ed and made clear to all stake­hold­ers.”

On whether the sec­tor should be used to bring in the much-need­ed for­eign ex­change, Mo­hammed said T&T needs to get its prod­ucts and ser­vices across the bor­ders and in­crease the need for them.

This, he said, is not as sim­ple as it sounds, but achiev­able with the right sup­port sys­tems.

“Rapid changes are oc­cur­ring in the glob­al agri­cul­tur­al and food com­merce sec­tors, which has sig­nif­i­cant ef­fects on eco­nom­ic growth. Over the past three decades, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant ex­pan­sion in glob­al agri­cul­tur­al trade. This trade has un­der­gone a sig­nif­i­cant struc­tur­al shift, with a greater em­pha­sis on high-val­ue ex­ports like dairy and meat prod­ucts, as well as hor­ti­cul­ture pro­duce. The glob­al mar­ket prices of nu­mer­ous food and agri­cul­tur­al items sky­rock­et­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic in 2019, rais­ing both price lev­els and the volatil­i­ty of agri­cul­tur­al prices in the years that fol­lowed,” he de­tailed

Fur­ther, the con­sul­tant said the in­vest­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, is grow­ing quick­ly in mid­dle-class and low­er-class na­tions in the ar­eas of food pro­duc­tion, pro­cess­ing, and re­tail.

“Food stan­dards are ex­pand­ing quick­ly, and pub­lic and pri­vate reg­u­la­tions on food safe­ty, qual­i­ty, and eth­i­cal and en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors are con­trol­ling food pro­duc­tion and com­merce more and more. Glob­al agri­cul­tur­al val­ue chains are now struc­tured dif­fer­ent­ly as a re­sult of the growth in agri-food mar­kets around the world, with a greater em­pha­sis on ver­ti­cal co­or­di­na­tion, sup­ply base con­sol­i­da­tion, and the dom­i­nance of big, multi­na­tion­al food cor­po­ra­tions,” he said.

As it per­tains to farm­ers em­brac­ing tech­nol­o­gy to make their work eas­i­er, Mo­hammed said they are em­brac­ing tech­nol­o­gy slow­ly, but sure­ly.

He high­light­ed that the use of tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove the ef­fi­cien­cy, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of agri­cul­tur­al process­es is known as “agtech,” or agri­cul­tur­al tech­nol­o­gy. Agtech’s use has in­creased glob­al­ly due to its abil­i­ty to re­duce ex­pens­es and in­crease yields.