Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat has is­sued a warn­ing that he has no in­ten­tion of be­ing black­mailed by any­one nor would take lo­cal­ly grown rice and give it to dogs.

Ramb­harat made the com­ment while un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion by a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee chaired by An­tho­ny Vieira in­to the op­er­a­tions of Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) at the ANR Robin­son Room, Par­lia­ment Build­ing, Port-of-Spain.

He was re­spond­ing to a ques­tion by mem­ber An­cil An­toine who told him that head of the Na­tion­al Rice Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion David Pam­ponette, in his writ­ten sub­mis­sions to the com­mit­tee, stat­ed that the large farms unit had been de­com­mis­sioned.

Ramb­harat said he was not fa­mil­iar with Pam­ponette be­ing a farmer or as­so­ci­at­ed with a group.

In Jan­u­ary, Ramb­harat said he re­ceived a text mes­sage from Pam­ponette who tried to “back him in a cor­ner” and was de­mand­ing from him cer­tain guar­an­tees be­fore the hear­ing.

“It ap­peared to me that Mr Pam­ponette feels he could ap­pear be­fore this com­mit­tee and em­bar­rass me in some form un­less I gave some sort of un­der­tak­ing. I would do no such thing. I would not be black­mailed by any­body.”

Ramb­harat ad­mit­ted that rice pro­duc­tion had dropped from 21,700 met­ric tonnes in 1992 to 1,893 tonnes in 2015 due to the clo­sure of Ca­roni 1975 Ltd.

T&T pro­duces 3,000 tonnes of pad­dy, while we im­port 36,000 tonnes of par­boiled rice.

“We can safe­ly move rice pro­duc­tion to 5,000 met­ric tonnes a year. If we are to in­crease pro­duc­tion it comes at a cost to the tax­pay­er,” Ramb­harat said.

To pro­duce 10,000 tonnes, Ramb­harat said, the farm­ers would need an ad­di­tion­al 5,800 acres of lands.

He plead­ed with the farm­ers to come to­geth­er to op­er­ate as a busi­ness, stat­ing that con­sumers have ac­quired a taste for par­boiled as op­posed to white rice.

“There is no par­boil­ing plant in this coun­try. My ques­tion is ...are tax­pay­ers pre­pared to pay for 10,000 met­ric tonnes $112 mil­lion? Is the Par­lia­ment pre­pared to al­lo­cate that mon­ey?”

This $112 mil­lion, Ramb­harat said does not in­clude the cost for lands, fer­tilis­ers, grains, in­puts and wa­ter.

Ramb­harat ex­pressed shock that NFM had ad­mit­ted in its first hear­ing that 95 per cent of the rice they bought from farm­ers were used in dog food.

“I am not pre­pared to use tax­pay­ers’ funds to take rice and give it to dogs.”

He said it was dis­turb­ing that the rice we grow nev­er make it on plates “but ends up in ken­nels around the coun­try.”

Ramb­harat ad­mit­ted that the mod­el adopt­ed by NFM to buy rice was not ef­fec­tive, stat­ing that we need a mill, as a pro­pos­al was un­der con­sid­er­ing.

“What this coun­try needs is a par­boil­ing plant,” he said.

To have a plant up and run­ning, Ramb­harat said rice pro­duc­tion must be in­creased.

“The di­vest­ment of the mill has pro­duced per­sons who are ap­par­ent­ly in­ter­est­ed in hav­ing a par­boil­ing plant. “

The min­is­ter said con­vert­ing NFM’s Carlsen Field’s mill in­to a par­boil­ing plant was un­work­able in terms of cost.

He said, “So the Gov­ern­ment is in­ter­est­ed. We re­cent­ly re­ceived a pro­pos­al that we are con­sid­er­ing. We wish to ad­vance to have a par­boil­ing plant in this coun­try which is not linked to the lo­cal rice farm­ers. If the rice farm­ers wish to sell to that plant even­tu­al­ly that is a pos­si­bil­i­ty.”

“I have al­ready giv­en in­struc­tions that an RFP (re­quest for pro­pos­al) be put out so that any­body who is will­ing to op­er­ate the ser­vices of the rice mill for lo­cal rice farm­ers and put in a pro­pos­al it should be ex­am­ined. The fact that we sup­port the par­boil­ing plant means we have an in­ter­est in find­ing some­thing else with the lo­cal pad­dy and not just white rice.”

Ramb­harat said his min­istry has a plan to trans­form the sec­tor and boost pro­duc­tion.

He ad­mit­ted that the rice in­dus­try was be­ing jeop­ar­dised by a car­tel.

“A car­tel of politi­cians for sure,” Ramb­harat said, stat­ing that for­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ters Vas­ant Bharath and De­vant Ma­haraj have been re­spon­si­ble for such a car­tel.

Ramb­harat de­nied that the Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to dis­con­tin­ue rice pro­duc­tion and de­pend sole­ly on im­ports.