Shas­tri Boodan

The Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion (FAO) of the Unit­ed Na­tions has com­mit­ted close to $500,000 to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of agri­cul­ture in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. This an­nounce­ment was made on Wednes­day by the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of FAO in T&T and Suri­name Ruben Robert­son when he spoke at a school gar­den com­pe­ti­tion prize­giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny that was or­ga­nized by the Na­tion­al 4H Coun­cil of T&T and the FAO

Schools re­ceived a to­tal $38,000 in prize mon­ey.

The com­pe­ti­tion ran from Sep­tem­ber 2022 to March 2023.

A to­tal of 1,890 stu­dents from 57 schools par­tic­i­pat­ed.

Robert­son said US$70,000 has been ap­proved by the FAO for the Na­tion­al 4H Coun­cil to de­vel­op agri­cul­tur­al pro­grammes in schools.

In his ad­dress, Robert­son said he has heard the ap­peals of teach­ers for as­sis­tance with school gar­den pro­grammes. Robert­son said he al­so learned that teach­ers and par­ents serve 4H in a vol­un­tary hu­man­i­tar­i­an way which must not go un­ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

He said the FAO was forg­ing part­ner­ships that are ef­fec­tive and could make a dif­fer­ence in the food se­cu­ri­ty of the na­tion.

He said the FAO is al­so in­volved in a "re­silient" school feed­ing pro­gramme in 6 re­gion­al coun­tries in­clud­ing T&T that would en­cour­age more peo­ple to con­sume lo­cal­ly grown food.

He said, “We be­lieve if we are able to in­flu­ence and change your (re­fer­ring to chil­dren) con­sump­tion pat­tern, it is a per­ma­nent change in so­ci­ety. When we mod­i­fy, ad­just and en­tice you with the fan­cy menus you en­joy in school you will go home and tell your par­ents you want the same thing. If we have all the school chil­dren telling their par­ents that they want the same type of menus, then we have a change, a shift in our con­sump­tion pat­tern.”

Robert­son said it is nec­es­sary to change the way we eat lo­cal­ly to pre­vent the ex­pand­ing risk of obe­si­ty and the re­lat­ed lifestyle dis­eases as­so­ci­at­ed with it. “Here in the Caribbean we have very high lev­els of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases and it is in­creas­ing. The last sta­tis­tics show that women are al­most 10 per cent more obese than me, we need to do some­thing as adults. Change in the con­sump­tion pat­terns will as­sist us in re­duc­ing the in­ci­dences of NCDs.”

He said the FAO in a short space of time has trained over 70 farm­ers who have the ca­pac­i­ty to sup­ply the school feed­ing pro­gramme with lo­cal prod­ucts.

He said the FAO has been able to work with the Na­tion­al School Di­etary Ser­vices pro­gramme to es­tab­lish di­etary guide­lines and have school feed­ing menus ad­just­ed to in­clude more lo­cal­ly pro­duced con­tent and make them more at­trac­tive to stu­dents. The San­gre Grande Hin­du School was judged the over­all win­ner of the com­pe­ti­tion.