Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Trin­ba­go Farm­ers Union (TFU) is seek­ing an ur­gent meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and key gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to ad­dress grow­ing con­cerns over the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s dairy in­dus­try amid re­ports that Nestlé is seek­ing to di­vest its lo­cal op­er­a­tions.

TFU pres­i­dent Shi­raz Khan yes­ter­day warned that hun­dreds of dairy farm­ers, na­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty and the sur­vival of the coun­try’s re­main­ing dairy in­dus­try are at risk if the com­pa­ny’s milk col­lec­tion sys­tem is dis­con­tin­ued.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence, Khan called for dis­cus­sions in­volv­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­istries of Agri­cul­ture, Trade, Labour and Ed­u­ca­tion, as well as Nestlé rep­re­sen­ta­tives, to de­ter­mine the way for­ward for the sec­tor.

“Our biggest con­cern is that if milk col­lec­tion stops, farm­ers will have nowhere to sell their milk,” Khan said.

“You can­not tell peo­ple who have in­vest­ed their lives, their fam­i­lies and gen­er­a­tions in­to dairy farm­ing that in a few months there will be no mar­ket.”

Khan said farm­ers were in­formed dur­ing meet­ings with Nestlé that while a buy­er had re­port­ed­ly been iden­ti­fied for parts of the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tions, un­cer­tain­ty re­mains over whether the com­pa­ny’s milk col­lec­tion pro­gramme will con­tin­ue.

He said any sale of Nestlé’s op­er­a­tions should in­clude guar­an­tees that fresh milk col­lec­tion from lo­cal farm­ers will con­tin­ue.

“Now they’re be­ing told they may have nowhere to sell their milk,” he said, re­fer­ring to younger farm­ers who re­cent­ly ex­pand­ed pro­duc­tion af­ter re­ceiv­ing as­sur­ances that the in­dus­try had a fu­ture.

Khan re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that de­clin­ing milk pro­duc­tion had made the in­dus­try com­mer­cial­ly un­vi­able, ar­gu­ing that decades of in­ad­e­quate pric­ing, lim­it­ed in­vest­ment and in­con­sis­tent gov­ern­ment sup­port had con­tributed to the sec­tor’s de­cline.

“The ques­tion is not why milk pro­duc­tion has de­clined. The ques­tion is who cre­at­ed the con­di­tions for it to de­cline,” he said.

Khan pro­duced doc­u­ments from a 2006 live­stock cost-of-pro­duc­tion sur­vey com­mis­sioned through the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, which es­ti­mat­ed that pro­duc­ing one litre of milk cost farm­ers an av­er­age of $4.55 at the time.

He said farm­ers cur­rent­ly re­ceive $3.86 per litre from Nestlé, sup­ple­ment­ed by a $1.50 gov­ern­ment sub­sidy, bring­ing to­tal rev­enue to $5.36 per litre.

How­ev­er, Khan said the in­crease over two decades has not kept pace with in­fla­tion or ris­ing pro­duc­tion costs.

“No oth­er in­dus­try has re­mained al­most stag­nant for 20 years while labour, feed, fu­el and every oth­er in­put con­tin­ued to in­crease,” he said.

He cit­ed fig­ures from the same study show­ing labour costs in­creased by 94 per cent be­tween 1986 and 2006, while feed costs rose by 62.5 per cent, ar­gu­ing that ex­pens­es have climbed sig­nif­i­cant­ly since then.

“Farm­ers have to buy gro­ceries, pay school ex­pens­es, pur­chase fu­el and main­tain equip­ment just like every­one else. Agri­cul­ture can­not sur­vive on prices frozen in time,” he said.

Khan said na­tion­al milk pro­duc­tion has de­clined from ap­prox­i­mate­ly 14 mil­lion litres an­nu­al­ly in 2000 to less than one mil­lion litres to­day, while the num­ber of dairy farm­ers has fall­en from near­ly 500 to around 250.

He blamed low farm-gate prices, in­ad­e­quate in­vest­ment and weak agri­cul­tur­al poli­cies for the de­cline.”You can­not con­tin­ue pro­duc­ing milk at a loss year af­ter year and ex­pect young peo­ple to re­main in the in­dus­try,” he said.

Khan al­so crit­i­cised suc­ces­sive Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tions, ar­gu­ing that both failed to mod­ernise the dairy in­dus­try.

Among the is­sues he high­light­ed were lim­it­ed in­vest­ment in ar­ti­fi­cial in­sem­i­na­tion pro­grammes to im­prove dairy ge­net­ics, re­duced sup­port for pas­ture de­vel­op­ment and live­stock feed pro­grammes, sub­si­dies that have not kept pace with in­fla­tion, in­ad­e­quate train­ing for farm­ers im­port­ing live­stock, in­creased live­stock theft and at­tacks on farm­ers, and mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of agri­cul­tur­al equip­ment re­main­ing un­used while farm­ers strug­gle to ac­cess feed.

He said agri­cul­ture has been treat­ed as the “bas­tard child” of the econ­o­my de­spite re­peat­ed calls for re­form.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the fi­nan­cial im­pact on farm­ers, Khan said the is­sue ex­tends be­yond the dairy sec­tor to na­tion­al nu­tri­tion.

“If lo­cal fresh milk dis­ap­pears, it is not on­ly the farm­ers who suf­fer,” he said.

“Our chil­dren de­pend on fresh milk. Nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty is just as im­por­tant as food se­cu­ri­ty.”

Khan warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go could be­come in­creas­ing­ly de­pen­dent on im­port­ed dairy prod­ucts if do­mes­tic milk col­lec­tion ends, mak­ing ur­gent gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion nec­es­sary.