RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Faced with steep fer­tilis­er costs and ris­ing food prices, Pro­fes­sor of Biotech­nol­o­gy and Plant Mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, Ja­yaraj Ja­yara­man, says it is time for farm­ers to be prop­er­ly trained in the use of fer­tilis­ers, pes­ti­cides and or­gan­ic bi­o­log­i­cal stim­u­lants.

Speak­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to Guardian Me­dia, Prof Ja­yara­man said many farm­ers overuse fer­tilis­ers and this has been harm­ing the soil.

He said with T&T heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on fer­tilis­er im­ports, it was time for farm­ers to start re­duc­ing fer­tilis­er use by util­is­ing com­post.

“Over­fer­til­is­ing is an is­sue here and in oth­er parts of the world. The ex­cess fer­tilis­ers we ap­ply go to waste. Much of the fer­tilis­er con­t­a­m­i­nates the wa­ter ta­ble and pol­lutes our wa­ter sup­ply. That is the source of all health is­sues, for­ma­tion of kid­ney stones, par­tic­u­lar­ly phos­phate,” he said.

Say­ing farm­ers were ap­ply­ing dou­ble the quan­ti­ty of fer­tilis­er need­ed, Prof Ja­yara­man said or­gan­ic com­post and ma­nure were bet­ter op­tions.

He said the UWI has been de­vel­op­ing or­gan­ic bi­o­log­i­cal stim­u­lants for use to help al­le­vi­ate the prob­lem.

Re­search is at the pre­lim­i­nary stage but Prof Ja­yara­man be­lieves if farm­ers are trained now, this could im­pact favourably on food sus­tain­abil­i­ty for the fu­ture.

Mean­while, agron­o­mist Akanath Singh, who has been teach­ing hun­dreds of farm­ers across the globe about crop cul­ti­va­tion, agreed that it was time for T&T to cre­ate its own fer­tilis­ers and or­gan­ic bio-stim­u­lants.

“Pro­fes­sor Adesh Ram­sub­hag and his team are cre­at­ing a new type of bi­o­log­i­cal stim­u­lant in UWI Life Sci­ences. This is the di­rec­tion we need to be head­ing. We need to make our own com­mer­cial fer­tilis­ers and or­gan­ic bio-stim­u­lants in T&T. We need to push for self-suf­fi­cien­cy,” he said.

He added: “The min­istry needs to ear­mark such fo­liar fer­tilis­ers and con­sid­er in­creased sub­si­dies for this spe­cif­ic fer­tilis­er, mak­ing it more af­ford­able to farm­ers and home gar­den­ers.”

Singh said fer­tilis­er prices rose high­er af­ter the Russ­ian in­va­sion of Ukraine.

“Rus­sia main­ly sup­plies five types of fer­tilis­ers to mar­kets around the world but it is time for us to look ahead and find ways to be­come more sus­tain­able with food pro­duc­tion,” Singh said.

Mean­while, the pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T (ASTT), Dar­ryl Ram­per­sad, said farm­ers are de­pen­dent on for­eign fer­tilis­ers be­cause of the use of ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied seeds. He said these seeds need fer­tilis­ers but not­ed that the ASATT has been en­cour­ag­ing farm­ers to use in­te­grat­ed farm­ing meth­ods to re­duce fer­tilis­er use.