With the coun­try star­ing down the bar­rel of ris­ing food in­fla­tion and short­ages, the Gov­ern­ment plans to en­cour­age lo­cal farm­ers to plant 5,000 acres of rice to ob­tain food se­cu­ri­ty.

This project which could cost the Gov­ern­ment ap­prox­i­mate­ly $20 mil­lion can pro­vide the coun­try with one-third of the rice the coun­try con­sumes an­nu­al­ly.

The move comes weeks af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture Avinash Singh at­tend­ed a re­gion­al meet­ing on agri­cul­ture and an agri-in­vest­ment fo­rum and ex­po in Guyana.

The vis­it was aimed at re­duc­ing the re­gion's food im­port bill and boost­ing food pro­duc­tion in T&T.

T&T is not self-suf­fi­cient in rice as we im­port an­nu­al­ly from Guyana and South Amer­i­ca  34,000 tonnes of the sta­ple cost­ing $121 mil­lion.

Up to 1995, over 6,000 farm­ers cul­ti­vat­ed at least 30 per cent of the coun­try's rice sup­ply (21,000 tonnes) with a sur­plus to ex­port.

How­ev­er, 2018 fig­ures showed that on­ly 585 tonnes of rice were pro­duced lo­cal­ly by less than a dozen farm­ers.

The farm­ers who were forced to cease op­er­a­tions be­cause of the Gov­ern­ment's ne­glect of the in­dus­try have al­ready draft­ed a list of sug­ges­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions to im­prove the sec­tor.

Some sug­ges­tions pitched are–the min­istry should write off all ADB loans farm­ers are un­able to pay, pro­vide high-qual­i­ty seeds, grants of $100,000, free chem­i­cals for one year, agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads, agron­o­mists, re­search of­fi­cers and prop­er in­fra­struc­ture.

One farmer es­ti­mat­ed the out­stand­ing loans at $5 mil­lion.

"This is the on­ly way farm­ers will get the con­fi­dence to re­turn to their fields. If these mea­sures are put in place and the min­istry works side-by-side with us with­in one year, we can come back on track. We can grow one-third of the rice we im­port. At least this will be a start to­wards food se­cu­ri­ty and self-suf­fi­cien­cy," one Plum Mi­tan farmer said.

The farmer said the Gov­ern­ment "may need to in­ject $20 mil­lion in­to the dy­ing in­dus­try" to get the ball rolling.

"That is the fig­ure we are look­ing at as a start."

As con­cerns arise over ris­ing food in­fla­tion and food short­ages due to the glob­al pan­dem­ic and the on­go­ing con­flict be­tween Ukraine/Rus­sia, the Gov­ern­ment is now plac­ing greater em­pha­sis on pro­mot­ing self-suf­fi­cien­cy in the sta­ple.

The news come eight years af­ter the then min­istry of food pro­duc­tion draft­ed a ten-year plan es­ti­mat­ed to cost tax­pay­ers $477 mil­lion to breathe new life in­to the strug­gling rice in­dus­try that was nev­er ac­tioned.

The 81-page “T&T Rice In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment Plan 2014-2024,” con­cep­tu­alised by tech­nocrats in the min­istry, fo­cused on ad­dress­ing food sov­er­eign­ty, di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my, and re­duc­ing the coun­try’s $5 bil­lion food im­port bill.

How­ev­er, the rec­om­men­da­tions were nev­er im­ple­ment­ed, as T&T still has to re­ly on coun­tries out­side for our rice sup­plies be­cause our pro­duc­tion has been ranked the low­est in the re­gion.

The doc­u­ment stat­ed that T&T’s mode of rice pro­duc­tion was in­ef­fi­cient and in need of an over­haul for the re­al­i­sa­tion of rice yields.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Ho­sein and Singh will soon host a meet­ing with rice farm­ers to dis­cuss re­vamp­ing the in­dus­try.

Hav­ing walked out of the in­dus­try two years ago af­ter fac­ing re­ceiver­ship, farmer Eniath Ho­sein said his hopes were re­cent­ly lift­ed when he heard of the min­istry's plan to re­vamp the sec­tor.

Ho­sein said many farm­ers who gave up rice pro­duc­tion have ex­pressed a keen in­ter­est to re­turn to the aban­doned fields if their loans are for­giv­en.

Last year, the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB) re­pos­sessed a com­bined har­vester and a ve­hi­cle af­ter Ho­sein could not re­pay his $1.3 mil­lion loan due to late pay­ments by the Na­tion­al Flour Mills for his pad­dy.

So far, the bank has not been able to get a buy­er for the har­vester val­ued at $850,000.

Ho­sein said he was forced to leave the in­dus­try.