The Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in St. Au­gus­tine, Pro­fes­sor Mark Wud­di­vi­ra, is urg­ing Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram to push agri-tourism as a vi­able eco­nom­ic dri­ver for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Pro­fes­sor Mark Wud­di­vi­ra is a Pro­fes­sor of Agri-En­vi­ron­men­tal Soil Physics at The UWI.

He says agri-tourism can boost both food se­cu­ri­ty and tourism if sup­port­ed through sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and part­ner­ships with gov­ern­ment and glob­al al­lies.

Pro­fes­sor Wud­di­vi­ra is call­ing for agri­cul­tur­al parks to show­case in­dige­nous crops and wildlife, which could at­tract vis­i­tors and spur ex­ports.

He al­so points out that the uni­ver­si­ty's cen­tu­ry-old ex­per­tise in trop­i­cal agri­cul­ture can help build a stronger and more di­ver­si­fied agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

“We want to see a clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture,” the UWI pro­fes­sor said.

“We [must] start do­ing things that are ev­i­dence-based. It is not just tech­nol­o­gy,” he as­serts. “It has to be ev­i­dence-based.”

Last week, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram an­nounced his plans to boost agri ex­ports by $1 bil­lion and to slash the coun­try’s food im­port bill by $2 bil­lion, in the com­ing years.