The is­sues aris­ing in the food pro­duc­tion sec­tor to­day will con­tin­ue to fes­ter as the pan­dem­ic pro­longs be­cause, as I have said pub­licly and re­peat­ed­ly over the years, we do not have and per­haps do not ap­pre­ci­ate the im­por­tance of an over­ar­ch­ing pol­i­cy frame­work for sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture and rur­al de­vel­op­ment in this coun­try.

In its ab­sence, as a pop­u­la­tion, we do not know the goals, ob­jec­tives, tar­gets, and key per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors set to mon­i­tor and eval­u­ate the ef­fi­cien­cy of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey spent on the sec­tor through its ad­min­is­tra­tion, de­vel­op­ment and in­cen­tives.

The fact is that we re­main hard-pressed to re­port an ex­pan­sion in food pro­duc­tion at a na­tion­al lev­el over the last five years much less for any per­ma­nent and strate­gic dis­place­ment of im­port de­pen­den­cy. Food im­ports must be un­der­stood in re­la­tion to es­sen­tial prod­ucts which can­not be pro­duced lo­cal­ly, sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­me­di­ary prod­ucts and con­cen­trates which ser­vice the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, food and bev­er­ages for the “high-end” con­sumer and restau­rant mar­ket, and the in­flux of pri­ma­ry agri­cul­tur­al com­modi­ties and prod­ucts that di­rect­ly com­pete with lo­cal farm­ers, fish­ers, and en­tre­pre­neurs.

In this vein, the food pro­duc­tion sec­tor con­tin­ues to be mis­un­der­stood and suf­fers from a his­to­ry of un­der­in­vest­ment and failed pol­i­cy. The pol­i­cy in­cludes iden­ti­fy­ing strate­gic pro­grammes and projects aligned to mea­sur­able out­comes and the re­quired fi­nan­cial, hu­man and tech­ni­cal re­sources. We must be mind­ful of this his­to­ry of ne­glect of this sec­tor over­all and ap­pre­ci­ate that it will be­come in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to do things in a re­ces­sion or chal­lenged sce­nario which should have been planned and im­ple­ment­ed in bet­ter eco­nom­ic times with greater fis­cal space.

What we have to get from the Prime Min­is­ter is the ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms in agri­cul­ture and oth­er port­fo­lios. The pop­u­la­tion has to ap­pre­ci­ate how his ex­perts and ap­pointees across min­istries, af­fil­i­at­ed state agen­cies, and oth­er tech­ni­cal and co­or­di­nat­ing bod­ies are re­spond­ing in the face of this and any oth­er pos­si­ble cri­sis to en­sure food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty for our peo­ple while ad­dress­ing the peren­ni­al is­sues of the sec­tor–in­clud­ing flood­ing, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, food loss, ran­dom qual­i­ty test­ing, mar­ket de­vel­op­ment, field san­i­ta­tion among oth­ers.

They should be pre­sent­ing pro­pos­als of na­tion­al in­ter­est go­ing for­ward since they are now main­tained more painful­ly at tax­pay­ers’ ex­pense.

It is in that dis­course we should be told if we are go­ing to de­pend on lo­cal farm­ers and agri­cul­ture dur­ing and af­ter the pan­dem­ic with all that is hap­pen­ing to cause tur­moil in glob­al food sys­tems, and the coun­try giv­en a sta­tus of the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try af­ter over five years of lead­er­ship op­por­tu­ni­ty in the sec­tor.

With­out know­ing where our food comes from, how it is pro­duced, with­out re­spect­ing the cir­cum­stances of the men and women who work to feed us, and with­out grasp­ing that the con­tin­ued im­por­ta­tion–es­pe­cial­ly of pri­ma­ry agri­cul­tur­al com­modi­ties–is sup­port for for­eign farm­ers, we would not ap­pre­ci­ate how se­ri­ous food se­cu­ri­ty plan­ning be­comes for a Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing State.

Ac­cord­ing to UN COM­TRADE sta­tis­tics, T&T would have im­port­ed 37,843 tons of HS 1006–rice in 2014 at a val­ue of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $143 mil­lion (TT). In that year, to­tal ex­ports of the com­mod­i­ty were es­ti­mat­ed at 336 tons at a val­ue of $0.767 mil­lion (TT). An­nu­al pad­dy pro­duc­tion av­er­aged 2,569 tons per an­num be­tween 2007 and 2014.

A les­son learnt from the ma­jor flood­ing dis­as­ters in 2017 and 2018 was that in times of dis­tress we de­pend on im­port­ed foods–canned, processed, pack­aged, dried, fresh, chilled and frozen. In this era of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, our im­port­ed food sup­ply is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly risky and more ex­pen­sive. Even with US mil­i­tary ac­tion near Venezuela re­cent­ly, we al­so have to be mind­ful of our rice sup­ply from Guyana even as that coun­try bat­tles with the pan­dem­ic.

In 2017, much like sev­er­al years pri­or, the top five food im­port cat­e­gories ac­count­ed for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 45 per cent of our to­tal food im­ports. These in­clude, in or­der, dairy pro­duce; birds' eggs; nat­ur­al hon­ey; ed­i­ble prod­ucts of an­i­mal ori­gin ($712.8 mil­lion or 12.35 per cent), Meat and ed­i­ble meat of­fal ($555.5 mil­lion or 9.62 per cent), Bev­er­ages, spir­its and vine­gar ($443.9 mil­lion or 7.69 per cent), Mis­cel­la­neous ed­i­ble prepa­ra­tions ($428.8 mil­lion or 7.43 per cent), and Ce­re­als ($420.5 mil­lion or 7.28 per cent). Ce­re­als in this cat­e­gori­sa­tion in­clude rice, maize and corn.

In 2018 T&T im­port­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $107 mil­lion (TT) or 19, 853 tons of rice. Al­though the re­port­ed im­port vol­ume fell by al­most 50 per cent, im­port val­ue did not. Even if quan­ti­ty re­mains avail­able go­ing for­ward, we have to be mind­ful of for­eign ex­change pres­sure. The de­cline in im­ports may be due to in­com­plete da­ta re­port­ing by some coun­tries gen­er­al­ly since lo­cal pro­duc­tion re­mains rel­a­tive­ly dor­mant as farm­ers have since mi­grat­ed to oth­er fields of en­deav­our and pro­duc­tion to sur­vive.

Nonethe­less, in 2018, 70 per cent or $74.2 mil­lion (TT) was sourced from Guyana and 19 per cent or $20.3 mil­lion (TT) was sourced from Brazil alone.

Notwith­stand­ing the dec­i­ma­tion of the in­dus­try over the past two decades, con­sis­tent­ly down from a cli­max of 19,060 tons of pad­dy pro­duced in 1992; there re­mains sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial for re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion as Trinidad holds a stock of arable lands, equip­ment and ma­chin­ery, pri­vate and state-op­er­at­ed milling ca­pac­i­ty, a cadre of ex­pe­ri­enced farm­ers and in­dige­nous knowl­edge, mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels, and an es­tab­lished con­sumer mar­ket among oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges.

In the ab­sence of prop­er mar­ket in­for­ma­tion and in­tel­li­gence on the lo­cal in­dus­try, farm­ers have in­vest­ed down­stream by bring­ing three of the more pop­u­lar rice brands to mar­ket–Is­land Grain, Moru­ga Hill Rice, and Navet La­goon Rice.

Rice pro­duc­tion is a land ex­ten­sive and wa­ter-in­ten­sive ac­tiv­i­ty re­quir­ing com­mit­ted re­sources giv­en that cap­i­tal equip­ment and arable lands are crop-spe­cif­ic and can­not be re­de­ployed eas­i­ly in­to oth­er types of food pro­duc­tion. With the slug­gish­ness to pro­vide land tenure to farm­ers and tar­get­ed sub-sec­tor de­vel­op­ment strate­gies, there are even more rea­sons to sup­port the need to pro­tect the re­main­ing rice farm­ers’ liveli­hoods and in­vest­ments from a pub­lic pol­i­cy per­spec­tive.

Leav­ing the pro­duc­tion of food sole­ly to be de­ter­mined by mar­ket forces and farm­ers’ pri­vate in­vest­ment hori­zon is un­ten­able, as has ar­guably been the case. More dan­ger­ous is un­der­es­ti­mat­ing or mis­cal­cu­lat­ing the dan­gers and risks as­so­ci­at­ed with surges and col­lapse of sup­ply.

There­fore, it is nec­es­sary to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment a na­tion­al tar­get­ed sub-sec­tor strat­e­gy for rice, a sta­ple food, which mit­i­gates the chal­lenges and sup­ports the pro­duc­tion, milling, pack­ag­ing and mar­ket­ing of lo­cal­ly-grown rice.

Every food ham­per, now shared by the thou­sands every day in this coun­try, de­pends on an im­port­ed pack of rice!

Per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, as the Prime Min­is­ter of­ten em­pha­sis­es in this pan­dem­ic, al­so hinges on our house­hold food sup­ply. It calls for in­di­vid­ual ac­tion to sup­ple­ment our food bas­kets by way of home gar­den­ing and re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties, pro­cess­ing and pre­serv­ing foods and to ra­tion the lit­tle that some of us may have. This is ev­i­dent to­day across the coun­try but it al­so re­quires that we take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for feed­ing our peo­ple by putting strong em­pha­sis on our food sov­er­eign­ty, an ide­al ab­sent in our lead­er­ship.

These, among oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions, are need­ed to en­sure the fea­si­bil­i­ty and long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the lo­cal rice in­dus­try. While it may be im­pos­si­ble to be­come en­tire­ly self-suf­fi­cient in rice, there is no need to slow ef­forts to de­vel­op this sub-sec­tor like many oth­ers.

Some pos­si­ble strate­gies to as­sist farm­ers and keep them in the in­dus­try:

*De­vel­op the po­ten­tial for ex­port agri­cul­ture. T&T may not be able to com­pete with re­gion­al rice pro­duc­ers such as Guyana and Suri­name in terms of vol­ume, par­boiled and white rice. How­ev­er, we can de­vel­op and ser­vice a re­gion­al niche mar­ket for healthy, nat­ur­al foods such as our Moru­ga Hill Rice or lo­cal brown rice;

*Bring greater ef­fi­cien­cy in the use of state fund­ing as it re­lates to in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment and by ex­ten­sion, se­cur­ing the liveli­hoods of stake­hold­ers along on the val­ue chain and cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment over a range of skill-sets;

*Con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing a mar­ket for lo­cal­ly grown and milled rice for hu­man con­sump­tion in tan­dem with ex­pand­ed pri­vate op­er­a­tions, out­put lev­els, mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion ac­tiv­i­ties. How­ev­er, the con­sumers are guid­ed by mar­ket prices. Farm­ers and lo­cal brand­ing need help to un­der­stand prod­uct dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion es­pe­cial­ly for gener­ic com­modi­ties;

*Pub­licly ven­ti­late the pric­ing regime for pad­dy cur­rent­ly paid by the State via NFM to farm­ers. It was the pol­i­cy of a for­mer gov­ern­ment per­haps de­signed to work as an in­cen­tive to at­tract farm­ers in­to pro­duc­tion. The price had to be high­er than the mar­ket price for pad­dy in or­der to be ef­fec­tive. We can­not, to­day, rep­ri­mand farm­ers for be­ing in­ef­fi­cient when it was gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy that dis­tort­ed the mar­ket. Re­mov­ing this arrange­ment al­to­geth­er is dif­fi­cult since the in­dus­try has been grown along that cost struc­ture over many years;

*Seek tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance and de­vel­op­ment strate­gies through deep­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Guyana Rice De­vel­op­ment Board (GRDB), In­ter­na­tion­al Rice Re­search In­sti­tute (IR­RI) and oth­er tech­ni­cal and ser­vice providers in Texas, Co­lum­bia, In­dia and Chi­na to list a few to­wards sus­tain­abil­i­ty and a col­lec­tion of va­ri­eties that per­form best in our eco­log­i­cal space with good mar­ket ap­pre­ci­a­tion and af­ford­abil­i­ty;

*Ex­plore the po­ten­tial for ge­o­graph­ic in­di­ca­tion, or­gan­ic pro­duc­tion or any seg­men­ta­tion which de­rives the high­est val­ue for our food pro­duc­tion;

*Bring more arable and cur­rent­ly idle and un­der­per­form­ing land as­sets in­to pro­duc­tion with new rice va­ri­eties, method­olo­gies, and ex­ten­sion sup­port to in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and in­come at the farm lev­el.