Food se­cu­ri­ty is im­per­a­tive to every na­tion and is cru­cial to any coun­try's eco­nom­ic sur­vival. Small is­land de­vel­op­ing states like T&T are no ex­cep­tion.

From 2011 to 2016, this coun­try spent a stag­ger­ing $32.7 bil­lion (TT) on food im­ports—bring­ing in main­ly fruits, veg­eta­bles, ce­re­als, dairy, and meat.

In 2017, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat boast­ed that the food im­port bill had been re­duced by $1 bil­lion (TT).

Farm­ers con­tin­ue to strug­gle in 2019, and this coun­try is no clos­er to be­ing food se­cure than it was sev­er­al years ago.

In this fourth in­stal­ment of Guardian Me­dia’s se­ries on glob­al warm­ing, we ex­am­ine the con­se­quences of glob­al warm­ing on the agri­cul­ture sec­tor as farm­ers grap­ple with ris­ing tem­per­a­tures and in­creased rain­fall.

Glob­al warm­ing is the heat­ing up of the earth’s at­mos­phere caused by car­bon diox­ide (CO2) emis­sions and oth­er hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties. Cli­mate change refers to the changes hap­pen­ing to the earth be­cause of glob­al warm­ing in­clud­ing ris­ing sea lev­els, ac­cel­er­at­ing ice melt in Antarc­ti­ca, in­creased rain­fall and harsh­er dry sea­sons.

Dry weath­er farm­ing

Rice farmer Richard Singh learned to plant and har­vest rice decades ago in the Ca­roni plains un­der the watch­ful eyes of his fa­ther.

Singh, who now cul­ti­vates his own rice fields, spoke about the strug­gles he faced and the hard de­ci­sions he has been forced to make.

Due to the lo­ca­tion of his land, every time the Ca­roni Riv­er bursts its banks, Singh’s field is flood­ed out and crops are af­fect­ed. Like­wise, when the dry sea­son comes around and the riv­er dries up, Singh is left with­out wa­ter for his crops.

Last Oc­to­ber when tor­ren­tial rain­fall caused wide­spread flood­ing across the coun­try, his loss­es were huge.

"When the flood came last year, I lost about 250 acres of rice and about 15 acres of veg­eta­bles, plus all of my equip­ment was un­der wa­ter—my spray cans, my blow­er, the pumps, the har­vester, it cost me thou­sands to re­pair all of those things, plus I lost all my crops," Singh said.

This year, he plant­ed rice on a very small plot of land, hop­ing to get seeds for re­plant­i­ng in 2020.

He is al­so try­ing his hand at corn and hopes that he can get enough wa­ter to har­vest this crop.

"I am try­ing to do the veg­etable farm­ing dur­ing the dry sea­son and if I do have to plant crops in the rainy sea­son, I will try to plant crops that can take the ex­cess wa­ter when it floods," he said. "With the weath­er pat­terns chang­ing it is be­com­ing even more dif­fi­cult to do farm­ing in the dry sea­son be­cause, in the rainy sea­son, you are get­ting too much wa­ter, and in the dry sea­son, you don’t have enough wa­ter."

He said af­ter his loss­es, he has de­cid­ed that none of his three chil­dren will fol­low in his foot­steps and get in­volved in agri­cul­ture.

"I told my chil­dren it doesn’t make sense be­ing a farmer, you stand to lose too much and there is no com­pen­sa­tion, there is noth­ing that can be done when your mon­ey is washed away or dried up."

Al­though he said he might try to plant veg­etable crops that can with­stand floods, Singh said he was still trau­ma­tised af­ter last Oc­to­ber’s floods.

"The way I feel, I think is the best thing would be on­ly to plant dur­ing the dry sea­son, it was so hard to watch all my crops just cov­er with wa­ter and that is not an easy thing to get over."

Fish ponds dry­ing up

Aqua­cul­ture farmer Kent Vier­ra, who rears tilapia in two ponds in Or­ange Grove Road, Tacarigua, said he be­lieves that cli­mate change has both a good and a bad ef­fect on his busi­ness.

"Gen­er­al­ly, tilapia be­ing a trop­i­cal fish prefers warmer wa­ter to stim­u­late both me­tab­o­lism and breed­ing, so they breed more and grow faster in warmer tem­per­a­tures," Vier­ra said. "But the down­side is that with warmer tem­per­a­tures, you have evap­o­ra­tion of the ponds and fish can’t live out­side of the wa­ter. We pump wa­ter from an­oth­er pond in­to this one but we can’t pump fast enough to make up for the evap­o­ra­tion, we have lost about a foot and a half of wa­ter and we haven’t re­al­ly hit the dry sea­son yet, and that hap­pened over the last month and a half."

The pond that the fin­ger­ling tilapia are raised in is over one-third of a mile long and about 100 feet in width.

Vier­ra point­ed to the wa­ter­mark left when the wa­ter be­gan evap­o­rat­ing at a rapid rate in mid-De­cem­ber. He es­ti­mates that by the end of the dry sea­son, he will lose more than three feet of wa­ter.

"Wa­ter is not a lim­it­less re­source as we once used to think and once you get evap­o­ra­tion, you al­ways have to be pump­ing wa­ter and adding wa­ter, es­pe­cial­ly at this stage. At this point in time from mid-De­cem­ber to now, we have lost about a foot and a half of wa­ter in the main reser­voir which is about one-third of a mile long and it is fair­ly sig­nif­i­cant in that re­gard."

In the com­ing years, Vier­ra said he will try to learn from what­ev­er hard­ships cli­mate change brings, so he can con­tin­ue to op­er­ate his busi­ness.

"We may have to make the cages small­er in terms of height and we are an­tic­i­pat­ing to have to find al­ter­na­tive sources for wa­ter to con­tin­ue to run the busi­ness in the next decade."

Agri­cul­ture econ­o­mist: In­tro­duce pol­i­cy change

Agri­cul­tur­al Econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj said while wa­ter is­sues are farm­ers' im­me­di­ate con­cern, he be­lieves pol­i­cy changes at a na­tion­al lev­el are nec­es­sary to save the agri­cul­tur­al in­dus­try.

"We can agree that agri­cul­ture has suf­fered from a his­to­ry of un­der­in­vest­ment and failed pol­i­cy… and glob­al warm­ing did not start now in 2019, the peo­ple in that field of study were warn­ing the world of the is­sues of the rise of tem­per­a­ture decades ago," he said.

"So we as a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state, our econ­o­my, ge­og­ra­phy, our food pro­duc­tion, and agri­cul­ture is even more vul­ner­a­ble, we can­not with­stand the shocks—which are what the farm­ers com­plain about, too much heat, too much rain­fall."

He said there are many oth­er fac­tors that can re­sult from warmer tem­per­a­tures, in­clud­ing dif­fer­ent lev­els of bac­te­ria, spores, and fun­gi that pro­mote dis­ease and pests in crops.

"Things like the swarms of lo­custs, I am not say­ing they are linked to glob­al warm­ing but it might pro­pel the habi­tats that fa­cil­i­tate them, it may cre­ate a breed­ing ground for a lot of things that our farm­ers can­not cope with."

De­scrib­ing the plight of farm­ers as a "tread­mill", Ma­haraj said pol­i­cy­mak­ers need to ex­am­ine the cop­ing meth­ods adopt­ed by farm­ers to in­form pol­i­cy.

"Farm­ers now are on a tread­mill, they have glob­al warm­ing, they al­so have prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, the myr­i­ad of things they com­plain about but some­how we still pro­duce food in this coun­try, which is an amaz­ing feat but all of them are on a tread­mill of want­i­ng to pro­duce more food and faster, they want to pro­duce be­fore the dry sea­son or be­fore the place floods."

He said faced with the rapid, in­creas­ing changes, farm­ers of­ten turn to chem­i­cal ad­di­tives that help their plants to grow with less wa­ter.

"If we think about that be­hav­iour, what some of them are do­ing is us­ing more fer­tilis­ers, so their crops grow faster or they ap­ply dif­fer­ent types of chem­i­cals so the plant is less wa­ter-in­ten­sive—there are chem­i­cal on the mar­ket that makes the plants need less wa­ter but us­ing all these ap­proach­es makes the plant un­safe to eat to some ex­tent.

"Be­cause farm­ers are be­ing forced to ap­ply dif­fer­ent chem­i­cals or dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es, which the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion may not know is in their food sup­ply, it’s like we know farm­ers are spray­ing A, B, C but now they are al­so spray­ing D."

Ma­haraj said farm­ers may al­so re­sort to pump­ing wa­ter from "drains and ravines" for their crops, ex­pos­ing the pub­lic to any dis­ease or harm­ful chem­i­cals in those wa­ter­cours­es.

"If farm­ers don’t have wa­ter, they don’t have on-farms ponds—if these things are pro­hib­it­ed then there are two ob­vi­ous sce­nar­ios, one is there is go­ing to be a de­cline in pro­duc­tion or the oth­er thing is they will start to pump wa­ter from every drain and ravine. But when they start to do that, it ex­pos­es us to what­ev­er is in the wa­ters of these drains and ravines."

If au­thor­i­ties can­not un­der­stand the farm­ers’ meth­ods of cop­ing, they leave the pub­lic and the food chain at risk.

"We need to un­der­stand the cop­ing tech­niques be­cause that has to in­form the pol­i­cy to pro­tect the food val­ue chain which is what the con­sumers will be get­ting to eat even­tu­al­ly."

BOX

State in­ter­ven­tion works: The In­dia mod­el

Ref­er­enc­ing a trip he made to In­dia to un­der­stand agri­cul­tur­al pol­i­cy changes there, Ma­haraj said state in­ter­ven­tion was able to elim­i­nate decades of de­for­mi­ties and dis­eases among mil­lions of peo­ple by chang­ing the way they prac­tice agri­cul­ture.

"For decades, these peo­ple used their hands to add chem­i­cals to the plants and there were gen­er­a­tions of them with birth de­fects and skin dis­or­ders. When the Gov­ern­ment in­ter­vened, they ac­tu­al­ly came up with an 18-day com­post­ing method that they taught to these farm­ers and once the farm­ers be­gan to prac­tice it on their own, there was no need for the chem­i­cal and that elim­i­nat­ed that is­sue. This is the type of ac­tion that we need to see for the sur­vival of our agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor."

With­out chem­i­cal ad­di­tives, crops can be classed as or­gan­ic and there­fore bring in greater prof­it for the farm­ers.

He be­lieves that a com­pre­hen­sive change needs to be made to save the lo­cal agri­cul­ture sec­tor.

"The ar­gu­ment is not on­ly about the over and un­der ab­sorp­tion of wa­ter, it’s not on­ly a wa­ter is­sue there are a lot of un­der­pin­nings to it—the farm­ing prac­tices over­all, the over­all be­hav­iour of peo­ple in­volved in the sec­tor, pests, and dis­eases or even the way we fi­nance agri­cul­ture will even­tu­al­ly have to change, we will have to fi­nance more to mit­i­gate wa­ter is­sues at the farm­ing lev­el."