KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With an an­nu­al av­er­age al­lo­ca­tion of $945 mil­lion, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture still falls be­low the $1 bil­lion thresh­old that T&T Farm­ers’ Union ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Shi­raz Khan says would demon­strate gen­uine con­cern for the sec­tor, warn­ing that any­thing less in the 2026 bud­get would sig­nal in­dif­fer­ence by the State.

Khan told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day he hopes the Gov­ern­ment lis­tened to cit­i­zens dur­ing its con­sul­ta­tions and acts on their rec­om­men­da­tions. A vet­er­an farmer, he urged greater in­vest­ment in agri­cul­ture to cut the coun­try’s grow­ing food im­port bill and im­prove pub­lic health.

He stressed that farm­ers are not seek­ing hand­outs but es­sen­tial re­forms, in­clud­ing the re­pair of agri­cul­tur­al roads, se­cure land tenure and stronger pro­tec­tion against prae­di­al lar­ce­ny.

“I do not want any mon­ey from them. Fix the roads, fix prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, fix the mar­kets, stop the im­por­ta­tion, give me some pro­tec­tion and let us see what we could be. I do not want any mon­ey. What we want is to be in an en­vi­ron­ment for us to grow, to de­vel­op, to plant more, keep pro­duc­tion go­ing, and en­cour­age oth­er peo­ple to get in the sec­tor,” Khan said.

He con­trast­ed agri­cul­ture’s 2025 al­lo­ca­tion with the $6.7 bil­lion for the Min­istry of Health and $6.1 bil­lion for Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, ar­gu­ing that im­port­ed foods were dri­ving ill­ness­es that now cost the State in health­care.

“So you want to spend mon­ey to build hos­pi­tals and buy drugs rather than im­ple­ment some­thing in the agri­cul­ture sec­tor to give peo­ple bet­ter food and stop im­port­ing that dog meat that they are im­port­ing and feed­ing peo­ple.”

Khan said de­pen­dence on im­port­ed food, much of which lo­cal farm­ers can pro­duce, con­tributes to ris­ing rates of di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion and can­cer. He crit­i­cised the State for per­mit­ting the im­port of haz­ardous chem­i­cals banned in Eu­rope and the US, adding that re­ject­ed US meat is be­ing dumped cheap­ly in T&T, un­der­min­ing lo­cal farm­ers.

With a new gov­ern­ment prepar­ing its first bud­get, he urged mea­sures to pro­tect the sec­tor.

“Let’s say that T&T con­sumes 100 met­ric tonnes of lamb, but we have the abil­i­ty to pro­duce 40 per cent; then you should on­ly al­low 60 per cent com­ing in, and then you should as­sist your cit­i­zens to in­crease their pro­duc­tion and say, ‘look, with­in the next year or so, we are go­ing to re­duce the im­por­ta­tion to on­ly 40 per cent and let the lo­cals pro­duce 60 per cent.’”

He ar­gued that re­duc­ing im­ports would in­crease em­ploy­ment, but said farm­ers face chal­lenges ac­cess­ing qual­i­ty breed­ing stock. While de­vel­oped coun­tries sub­sidise their farm­ers, T&T’s re­ceive no such sup­port.

“So we are al­ways at a dis­ad­van­tage, and you will hear peo­ple say that these im­port­ed goods are much cheap­er than what we are pro­duc­ing here. Of course, it must be cheap­er be­cause they are sub­sidised and we are not. Their gov­ern­ment gives them sub­si­dies, and we do not.”

Khan said that while agro-pro­cess­ing plants ex­ist, they are not cen­tralised. With short­ages in toma­toes and egg­plants and farm­ers leav­ing the in­dus­try, he urged the Gov­ern­ment to make agri­cul­ture more at­trac­tive to young peo­ple.

Mean­while, Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T pres­i­dent Dar­ryl Ram­per­sad said the or­gan­i­sa­tion has not re­ceived fund­ing for al­most nine months, stalling crit­i­cal work. He said the ASTT has been wait­ing more than two years for re­sources to con­tin­ue its African Gi­ant Snail pro­gramme and to ex­tend in­cen­tives to ac­tive farm­ers.

“As it is now, the cri­te­ria are that you own land and have doc­u­men­ta­tion to ac­cess the in­cen­tive pro­gramme, and if it is that we can see these farm­ers that are in pro­duc­tion re­ceiv­ing the in­cen­tive, it is go­ing to dri­ve agri­cul­ture to the next lev­el. It is go­ing to en­cour­age young farm­ers and sin­gle women as well to get in­to agri­cul­ture,” Ram­per­sad said.

Ram­per­sad added that the ASTT al­so wants to see greater em­pha­sis on tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven farm­ing, such as green­house sys­tems, along­side more train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for farm­ers.