Yvonne?Ba­boolal

Cen­tral farm­ers no longer have to get up at 3 am to go to Tu­na­puna or Port-of-Spain to sell their pro­duce.From next week, the farm­ers will be whole­sal­ing their pro­duce at their own Cen­tral Farm­ers' Whole­sale Mar­ket at Wood­ford Lodge, Ch­agua­nas.

The new­ly-ren­o­vat­ed 22,680 square feet build­ing which once housed the old rice bond at the Wood­ford Lodge fac­to­ry will now ac­com­mo­date about 1,000 farm­ers from nine large farm­ing ar­eas in cen­tral, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj said in a fea­ture ad­dress at the com­mis­sion­ing of the mar­ket yes­ter­day.

Farm­ers, Ch­agua­nas May­or Gopaul Boodan, Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce Richie Sokhai and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co) and oth­ers at­tend­ed the event.Ma­haraj said the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry chose to es­tab­lish T&T's third whole­sale farm­ers' mar­ket in Cen­tral be­cause of the hard­ship farm­ers en­dured go­ing out of the area to sell their pro­duce.

"Fi­nal­ly, your strug­gle is over," he told the farm­ers.The mar­ket will be ful­ly func­tion­al by next week and will open for two or three days, with a large park­ing space and on­site se­cu­ri­ty.Ma­haraj said pack hous­es for stor­ing food are al­so to be con­struct­ed in six to eight weeks in Brechin Cas­tle and Brick­field in Tabaquite. Oth­er ma­jor agri­cul­tur­al in­fra­struc­ture projects are ear­marked for Fe­lic­i­ty and dif­fer­ent ar­eas in Cen­tral, he said.

Ma­haraj com­mend­ed Namde­v­co for the good job it has been do­ing in agri­cul­ture, not­ing the en­ti­ty was starved for funds and emas­cu­lat­ed un­der pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions.He said $1/4 bil­lion was pumped in­to an or­gan­i­sa­tion called the Trinidad Agri-Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion and noth­ing has been shown for this.The min­is­ter said be­cause of Namde­v­co's in­tro­duc­tion of lo­cal pro­duce in the na­tion­al school feed­ing pro­gramme, farm­ers have been able to dou­ble or triple lo­cal food in­put over the last four years.

Last month, Namde­v­co launched a cas­sa­va muf­fin in the pro­gramme and Irish pota­toes are be­ing re­placed with green paw paw.Ma­haraj said Cen­tral Bank sta­tis­tics show the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, for the first time in 40 years, saw five con­sec­u­tive quar­ters of growth from 2012 to 2013. For the first time in 21 years in­fla­tion al­so re­mained in sin­gle dig­its for the first six months of 2013.

Asked by the T&T Guardian about the law man­dat­ing farm­ers to get a li­cense to draw wa­ter for their crops from rivers and streams, he said that was a le­gal mat­ter un­der the Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources.Ma­haraj said he will not en­cour­age any­one to break the law and said the En­vi­ron­ment Min­istry is seek­ing to con­serve wa­ter.Sookhai, in his ad­dress, said it was an ex­cit­ing day for Ch­agua­nas, as the old rice bond at Wood­ford Lodge will no longer be a di­nosaur but an eco­nom­ic hub.

He said when Ca­roni Ltd was shut down in 2003 every­one thought Ch­agua­nas would have dried up."Out of the ash­es of Ca­roni Ltd grew Ch­agua­nas," he said.