STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Golds­bor­ough farmer Roland Mur­ray has blamed the is­land’s food short­age square­ly on To­bag­o­ni­ans, ex­press­ing dis­may that To­ba­go has be­come al­most en­tire­ly re­liant on im­ports from Trinidad.

Over the past two weeks, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in To­ba­go has voiced frus­tra­tion over what they de­scribed as un­pre­dictable and in­con­sis­tent sail­ings by the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny car­go ves­sel. Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said on Sun­day that while larg­er su­per­mar­kets main­tain sta­ble stock, small­er shops—par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al ar­eas—are strug­gling to ob­tain cer­tain items.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Mur­ray de­scribed the boat is­sues as a “bless­ing in dis­guise.”

“Let To­bag­o­ni­ans go and plant food. That is the an­swer. Let To­ba­go plant,” he said.

“We were self-suf­fi­cient for years in the past. Now we have to de­pend on Trinidad for food. That is non­sense.”

He added that the cur­rent un­cer­tain­ty could prompt ac­tion to re­vive the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

“Some­thing has to hap­pen for peo­ple to come to­geth­er and stop de­pend­ing on the gov­ern­ment for ear­ly-morn­ing wuk, de­pend­ing on Trinidad for food. Just imag­ine things like green ba­nanas, co­conut wa­ter, and dry co­conut com­ing from Trinidad. That is to­tal­ly ridicu­lous.”

Au­gus­tine re­cent­ly stat­ed that a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) study is un­der­way to de­ter­mine how the is­land could achieve at least three months of food se­cu­ri­ty.

Mur­ray, how­ev­er, ar­gued that the fo­cus on the fer­ry sched­ule is most­ly po­lit­i­cal.

“They wan­na talk about boat, boat, boat. It’s most­ly pol­i­tics, you know. But for those of us be­ing hon­est with our­selves, that shouldn’t af­fect us. Maybe for ma­te­ri­als like lum­ber and ce­ment, which we can’t pro­duce here, but when it comes to food—To­ba­go used to send food to Trinidad. I don’t know how they could be cry­ing about food be­cause the boat hasn’t come in two days.”

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has al­so crit­i­cised the THA for the seabridge is­sues, de­scrib­ing a “re­al cri­sis” at his Ma­son Hall farm. Row­ley said he strug­gled to ob­tain feed for thou­sands of live­stock, in­clud­ing pigs, sheep, and chick­ens.

Ka­reem Thomas, a su­per­vi­sor at Mt Grace Feed De­pot, said sup­plies are be­ing ra­tioned as stock lev­els have fall­en to just 20 per cent ca­pac­i­ty. The de­pot sup­plies sev­er­al su­per­mar­kets and di­rect­ly sup­ports poul­try farm­ers.

“It’s been tough be­cause we have to ra­tion. A farmer came for 20 bags last week—you couldn’t get 20 bags. You could on­ly get five,” Thomas said.

“This Blue Wave calami­ty—gov­ern­ment and THA have to step in and put things in place for the farm­ing pop­u­la­tion of To­ba­go.”

He added that the ware­house was al­ready emp­ty one week af­ter the Cabo Star left on Jan­u­ary 12.

“If the gro­cery doesn’t have eggs, the pub­lic can’t eat. If the gro­cery doesn’t have chick­en, the pub­lic can’t eat. If the gro­cery doesn’t have feed, the an­i­mals will die,” Thomas said, not­ing that the com­pa­ny ab­sorbed in­creased op­er­at­ing costs to re­main loy­al to cus­tomers.

Mur­ray traced the de­cline in To­ba­go’s agri­cul­tur­al farm­ing back to 1963, when Hur­ri­cane Flo­ra dev­as­tat­ed the sec­tor. The Cat­e­go­ry 3 storm killed 18 peo­ple, up­root­ed crops, and left farm­land sub­merged. He said a shift in cul­ture since then has wors­ened the sit­u­a­tion.

“The gov­ern­ment start­ed this ear­ly-morn­ing wuk where peo­ple come out and by 7 o’clock they are back home. We lost two gen­er­a­tions of farm­ers be­cause of this. Every­one wants an ear­ly-morn­ing wuk. The young fel­las who were sup­posed to take over from their grand­par­ents are on the block. One gov­ern­ment even al­lowed them to smoke weed freely (de­crim­i­nalised), and that’s the whole break­down of so­ci­ety. To­ba­go is suf­fer­ing be­cause of that.”

Mur­ray added that find­ing re­li­able farm labour is a chal­lenge.

“Some­times you get Venezue­lans, but they all get bright. If they come, they work a lit­tle—two hours—and want $300-$400.”

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the Port Au­thor­i­ty said the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny left Port-of-Spain at 2.30 pm with 156 trucks and trail­ers, 23 vans, four cars and 20 con­tain­ers.

It said night berthing op­er­a­tions have be­gun and will con­tin­ue ahead of its maid­en com­mer­cial sail­ing on Sun­day.

The ves­sel will leave Scar­bor­ough at 4 am to­day ow­ing to a rough-seas bul­letin by the Met Of­fice. On Fri­day it will leave Port-of-Spain at 2 pm, be­fore de­part­ing the Port of Scar­bor­ough at 11 pm.