The Unit­ed Na­tions has em­barked on a US$250,000 ($1.7 mil­lion) ini­tia­tive to boost T&T’s food se­cu­ri­ty.

The glob­al de­vel­op­ment body hopes this can al­so be ex­tend­ed to the re­gion soon es­pe­cial­ly as the Caribbean con­tin­ues to face an ex­or­bi­tant food im­port bill of US$6 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, Reuben Robert­son, coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive for T&T and Suri­name for the UN’s Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion (FAO), ex­plained the project com­pris­es four parts; en­hanc­ing ba­nana yield, us­ing bam­boo as shade hous­es; in­creas­ing sheep and goat pro­duc­tion and adding fea­tures to an ex­ist­ing farm­ers’ app to fur­ther mod­ernise the sec­tor.

The project, which is in its pi­lot stage is be­ing fund­ed by the CAF De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca. 

The first three com­po­nents will ini­tial­ly take place in To­ba­go and once suc­cess­ful, will be ex­pand­ed to Trinidad and then to the rest of the Caribbean, Robert­son said.

On the de­ci­sion to se­lect To­ba­go, he ex­plained, “It is look­ing at food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty. To­ba­go has tra­di­tion­al­ly been an is­land that has the po­ten­tial to pro­duce its own food and over the years it has lost this op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

In de­tail­ing the ba­nana as­pect of the ini­tia­tive, Robert­son said this par­tic­u­lar fruit was se­lect­ed be­cause To­ba­go im­ports most of its ba­nanas from Trinidad and the rest of the re­gion and there­fore, the project is aimed at mak­ing the is­land more food se­cure and self-suf­fi­cient.

The type of ba­nana be­ing used is the Gran Nain which is high yield­ing.

Robert­son fur­ther ex­plained that the FAO, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). will in­tro­duce these ba­nana plants via tis­sue cul­ture.

The source plants, Robert­son said, were sourced from St Vin­cent, known for its high-qual­i­ty ba­nanas.

“What is re­al­ly good for To­ba­go is it has its own tis­sue cul­ture lab that pro­duces the ba­nana plants. That is a good way to start be­cause those ba­nana plants can give you up to $40 to $50 pounds per bunch,” he not­ed.

Such boun­ti­ful pro­duc­tion can al­so en­able farm­ers to reap more fi­nan­cial re­wards.

“A bunch can give you one box plus and in Trinidad and To­ba­go a box of ba­nanas is a lot of mon­ey,” Robert­son said adding, “This varies de­pend­ing on where you buy it. If you’re buy­ing it from the whole­saler then it is as high as $70. If you’re buy­ing it from the re­tail­er it is about $120 to $130.”

Apart from tis­sue cul­ture, he said farm­ers can go a step fur­ther by mas­ter­ing pest con­trol and dis­eases like the black siga­to­ka, a leaf-spot dis­ease of ba­nana plants caused by the as­comycete fun­gus.

When this project start­ed in Rox­bor­ough about 18 months ago, there were some hic­cups due to en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges and the prepa­ra­tion of the site. How­ev­er, it has flour­ished with the nec­es­sary ir­ri­ga­tion fa­cil­i­ties in place and the pro­cure­ment of equip­ment.

“We have been on even keel since,” Robert­son added, not­ing that some of the ba­nanas are al­so in­to the first ra­toon (a new shoot or sprout spring­ing from the base of a crop plant).

Why Rox­bor­ough?

Robert­son said a Gov­ern­ment field sta­tion is lo­cat­ed there, which pro­vides ready labour.

With all the el­e­ments in place, he said 30 farm­ers will be tar­get­ed ini­tial­ly to be ful­ly trained in all as­pects of this ven­ture.

“We want­ed to make sure all the in­gre­di­ents for the pi­lot were avail­able and sup­port­ed by the THA and now that we have that we would now bring the farm­ers to that site to train them in tech­nol­o­gy, pro­duc­tion, har­vest­ing and mar­ket­ing,” Robert­son said.

An­oth­er com­po­nent of the over­all project is bam­boo shade hous­es.

Ac­cord­ing to Robert­son, these are more cost-ef­fec­tive than the reg­u­lar steel struc­tures used to pro­tect veg­eta­bles from harsh el­e­ments.

“In­stead of us­ing the con­ven­tion­al-type shade hous­es where you im­port the ex­pen­sive steel struc­tures that cost a lot of mon­ey which farm­ers are un­able to meet, we have in­tro­duced a tech­nol­o­gy to treat bam­boo to al­low it to last for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od,” he ex­plained.

He al­so hopes this can be patent­ed.

Bam­boo was tar­get­ed be­cause, in To­ba­go, Robert­son said it is an in­va­sive species and un­til now, no one has found a prop­er use for it.

Two shade hous­es are cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion at the Rox­bor­ough field sta­tion and in a few weeks, they will be shown to farm­ers to en­cour­age them to use this method.

On when this can be brought to Trinidad, Robert­son said be­fore the tech­nol­o­gy can be ex­port­ed it first has to be mas­tered in To­ba­go.

“Af­ter which we will start do­ing some work in Trinidad and then we will spread it to the rest of the re­gion,” he said.

Build­ing the live­stock sec­tor

To­ba­go’s live­stock sec­tor and by ex­ten­sion, live­stock pro­duc­tion is an­oth­er area that the UN hopes to en­hance.

Rober­son said this will be achieved with the help of Cuban ex­perts who will ex­am­ine the is­land’s sheep and goat in­dus­try.

He fur­ther ex­plained that three ex­perts from Cu­ba un­der the “South-South co­op­er­a­tion” will help de­vel­op the project by in­tro­duc­ing em­bryo trans­fer to in­crease the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of these an­i­mals.

Ac­cord­ing to the UN’s web­site, the South-South co­op­er­a­tion is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of sol­i­dar­i­ty among peo­ples and coun­tries of the south that con­tributes to their na­tion­al well-be­ing, their na­tion­al and col­lec­tive self-re­liance and the at­tain­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al­ly agreed de­vel­op­ment goals, in­clud­ing the 2030 Agen­da for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment.

Why Cubans?

Robert­son said they have mas­tered em­bryo trans­fer over the years.

Al­so, they are part of the FAO frame­work for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

He said the Cubans are ex­pect­ed to be in T&T for two weeks and will al­so link up with the Fac­ul­ty of Agri­cul­ture of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine to ex­plore whether some of the work can al­so be done at UWI’s field sta­tion.

Mak­ing farm­ing more tech­nol­o­gy savvy

Trinidad’s farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty is ex­pect­ed to be one step close to mod­erni­sa­tion as the project al­so aims to en­hance an app that is al­ready be­ing used by Namde­v­co.

The app, Far­mVue, was es­tab­lished with the help of the Crop­per Foun­da­tion and the In­ter­Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA).

Robert­son said as it cur­rent­ly stands Namde­v­co has a sys­tem where it does not have all farm­ers on its data­base and there­fore, can­not tab­u­late all of the coun­try’s pro­duce.

“Namde­v­co has da­ta on a se­lect num­ber of farm­ers and the da­ta they have they can tell what these farm­ers are pro­duc­ing at a par­tic­u­lar time.

“Rather than rein­tro­duce the wheel we want to take this tech­nol­o­gy to the oth­er lev­el by in­tro­duc­ing oth­er com­po­nents to have a bet­ter idea of the farm­ing in­dus­try and how it is do­ing,” Robert­son said.

Apart from in­creased da­ta col­lec­tion, he said cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is al­so crit­i­cal for farm­ers es­pe­cial­ly if they want their goods on the su­per­mar­kets’ shelves.

“Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is crit­i­cal if the farm­ers are to max­imise the op­por­tu­ni­ties in the su­per­mar­kets and there­fore all the in­for­ma­tion on whether or not a farmer is cer­ti­fied, what are the com­modi­ties he or she is pro­duc­ing in what quan­ti­ties and all of that and more we need to cap­ture in one place,” Robert­son added.