Eat­ing hot dou­bles be­fore work or head­ing home is a tra­di­tion that many hold dear to their hearts.

But as T&T con­tin­ues to grap­ple with a high food im­port bill, mak­ing this del­i­ca­cy a na­tion­al dish is a great dis­ap­point­ment to Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Clarence Ramb­harat.

Speak­ing at the Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion’s (PF­BC) Grow Your Own Food Project in Fan­ny Vil­lage, Point Fortin, Mon­day, Ramb­harat said the in­gre­di­ents for dou­bles is ful­ly-im­port­ed.

His dis­ap­point­ment came ear­li­er this year when the Gov­ern­ment closed re­tail food out­lets, forc­ing peo­ple back to their kitchens. So­cial me­dia was abuzz with users post­ing their videos mak­ing the favoured In­do-Trinida­di­an cui­sine. Such was the de­mand for the na­tion­al food, some busi­ness­es that re­mained open dur­ing the lock­down added hot dou­bles to their of­fer­ings.

Ramb­harat said he of­ten gets ques­tions about the bil­lions spent an­nu­al­ly to im­port food while there is a lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

He said he would of­ten re­spond to peo­ple by ask­ing them to send a pho­to­graph of the con­tents of their re­frig­er­a­tor, say­ing that con­sumer de­mands and pur­chas­ing pat­terns are ma­jor caus­es of the food im­port bill.

In 2019, T&T spent $5.67 bil­lion on food im­ports, in­clud­ing $1.1 bil­lion each on ce­re­als and fruits and veg­eta­bles, $180 mil­lion on bis­cuits, bread and pas­tries and TT$28 mil­lion on mix­es and doughs.

“Our big im­ports, of course, are things that we need; rice, flour, sug­ar. Those things are things that we need but do we need so much that dou­bles must be the na­tion­al dish of this coun­try? Not just a na­tion­al dish at a cer­tain time, but a na­tion­al break­fast, a na­tion­al lunch and na­tion­al din­ner.

“I don’t have any prob­lem with a bara every so of­ten but to see peo­ple dressed for work in all their finer­ies, at five and six in the morn­ing, stand­ing up by a dou­bles man and com­ing back lunchtime by a next dou­bles man...I was so dis­ap­point­ed in Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans that in COVID, the one thing they could find to do with their time was to make dou­bles. Dou­bles is 100 per cent im­port­ed con­tent. There is no lo­cal con­tent,” Ramb­harat said. 

He said on­ly the in­gre­di­ents in condi­ments like cu­cum­ber, pep­per sauce and tamarind sauce might be lo­cal.

Ramb­harat com­ments sup­port­ed the thrust of the (PF­BC) to en­cour­age peo­ple to grow their food, sug­gest­ing that they al­so choose to cook lo­cal foods. In­stead of buy­ing car­rots, which ac­counts for rough­ly $20 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, they can choose pump­kins, which lo­cal farm­ers grow.

Not­ing that many cit­i­zens fol­low North Amer­i­can cul­ture, Ramb­harat re­called dur­ing his days in the gas in­dus­try many work­ing-class peo­ple would pur­chase break­fast, lunch and din­ner, for them­selves and chil­dren.

“It was very dis­ap­point­ing. A lot of them were pro­fes­sion­als work­ing with me, and I thought that at least that they ought to know that they can’t live off of piz­za, fry chick­en, burg­ers and those kinds of foods. There are thou­sands of rea­son why we should not even be on that train, but we have found our­selves there. Not that I have a prob­lem with fast food or peo­ple buy­ing food, but there is a bal­ance that must be struck in favour of grow­ing your own food and cook­ing what we eat and most im­por­tant­ly, eat­ing the things that we know and are fa­mil­iar with.”

With an aim to re­duce food im­ports, the PF­BC dis­trib­uted grow box­es, seeds and ma­nure to res­i­dents of the Hol­ly­wood/Fan­ny Vil­lage dis­trict to be­gin their home gar­dens.

May­or Saleema Mc­Cree Thomas told res­i­dents that when they grow their own food, it not on­ly tastes bet­ter, but it is health­i­er.

“Oth­er ben­e­fits in­clude sav­ing mon­ey, guar­an­teed fresh­ness and packed with nu­tri­ents as you con­trol what goes in­to what you grow. These ben­e­fits can­not be de­nied and must not be ig­nored. The time is right, the time is now. Let us grow our own food,” Mc­Cree Thomas said.