Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Amidst on­go­ing de­struc­tion and hard­ship in the agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty in Los Iros, a farmer suf­fered even more loss­es af­ter 3,000 pounds of his toma­toes were stolen.

Sus­tain­able Cli­mate Re­silience Ini­tia­tive pres­i­dent Ed­ward Mood­ie yes­ter­day called on the pub­lic to be on the look­out for the man whom he be­lieves would be seek­ing to sell the stolen pro­duce.

Mood­ie, who has been as­sist­ing farm­ers since mas­sive land move­ment de­stroyed the road lead­ing to their farm­lands al­most two weeks ago, said the theft oc­curred on Sun­day dur­ing a vis­it by Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram, La Brea MP Clyde El­der, En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and oth­er of­fi­cials.

Mood­ie took to his Face­book page to high­light the is­sue and in­form the pub­lic about the sit­u­a­tion. While the farm­ers were gath­ered for the meet­ing and tour with the of­fi­cials, he said an old sil­ver Fron­tier van with two oc­cu­pants ac­cessed the farmer’s gar­den from a back en­trance. The thief packed the toma­toes, which were in cro­cus bags, in­to his van. The farmer dis­cov­ered the theft lat­er that day and called the po­lice.

He re­ceived word on Mon­day that the per­pe­tra­tor’s van got stuck in the mud near a di­lap­i­dat­ed bridge. The farmer again called the po­lice and in­formed them that he was block­ing the road to pre­vent the per­pe­tra­tor from pass­ing. But Mood­ie said the po­lice in­struct­ed the farmer not to do that, and he com­plied. How­ev­er, the po­lice did not re­spond im­me­di­ate­ly.

About half an hour lat­er, an­oth­er van as­sist­ed the per­pe­tra­tor by pulling his ve­hi­cle—still filled with the toma­toes—out of the mud. Mood­ie said the farmer con­front­ed the per­pe­tra­tor as he was leav­ing, but the man ver­bal­ly abused and threat­ened him.

Mood­ie said the toma­toes were ripe and half-ripe and that the thief would try to sell them.

“Any­body see­ing this man com­ing up to sell these toma­toes, please call the po­lice. It is stolen toma­toes. Farm­ers have no right to be suf­fer­ing in the weath­er, the sun, the cold, the rain, the land­slide, the de­struc­tion in Los Iros and then some men from out of Loren­sotte come and steal those toma­toes from you.”

Mood­ie said that if the po­lice had re­spond­ed on time, they could have in­ter­cept­ed the per­pe­tra­tors. Mood­ie said, “I am hop­ing that in due time, af­ter the bud­get, there is fi­nanc­ing for po­lice sta­tions to be able to get the ve­hi­cles. This is not about the po­lice, but it shows that the sys­tem is not 100 yet. They are work­ing on it and hope­ful­ly it will fix.”

Mean­while, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram said a tem­po­rary Bai­ley bridge would be in­stalled along an al­ter­na­tive route, and road in­fra­struc­tur­al work would be un­der­tak­en to re­store ve­hic­u­lar ac­cess to the farm­ers’ gar­dens and help re­store food se­cu­ri­ty to the area.