Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T ASTT) pres­i­dent Dar­ryl Ram­per­sad is warn­ing the coun­try that the price of food will now be at an “all-time high” af­ter flood loss­es once again in­flict­ed on farm­ers over the last few days.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter tour­ing the sub­merged fields in Aranguez South, San Juan, yes­ter­day, Ram­per­sad said the farm­ers had in­curred 100 per cent loss­es with the most re­cent flood­ing event.

“What we are see­ing this morn­ing (and) since yes­ter­day, we have been re­ceiv­ing calls and we have been tour­ing dif­fer­ent ar­eas, so from Or­ange Grove plant­i­ng project down to Ca­roni, Trantrill, Ma­coya - all these ar­eas are un­der wa­ter this morn­ing. So, most of the agri­cul­ture that we have on the East-West cor­ri­dor, we could safe­ly say is out of pro­duc­tion be­cause of this,” Ram­per­sad said.

“What we could ex­pect go­ing in­to the Christ­mas sea­son is that food prices are go­ing to be at an all-time high. Of course, not be­cause of the farm­ers but be­cause of the is­sues that we are fac­ing this morn­ing.”

He an­tic­i­pates the con­tin­ued in­clement weath­er and flood­ing will on­ly fur­ther ex­ac­er­bate the dam­age to the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor of the coun­try. While he called for the Gov­ern­ment’s im­me­di­ate fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to the farm­ers, he said this will on­ly be a short-term so­lu­tion.

“Yes, we know it’s bad weath­er to blame. It’s an act of God. We can’t stop the rain but at the same time, we can be proac­tive. What we call­ing on for this morn­ing is a bet­ter ap­proach to in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment for the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

Bran­don Baldeo, 25, grew veg­eta­bles in the plant­i­ng project and told Guardian Me­dia he is now fed-up with his hard work be­ing washed away.

“Five days now we pump­ing out wa­ter and yes­ter­day it couldn’t take no more so you see­ing what go­ing on here. I is a young fel­la, it’s plen­ty loss­es. It hard to take. And then it wouldn’t have any work for the work­ers to take. It’s six work­ers we have,” Baldeo said.

“All we have to do is wait till the wa­ter go down and for the place to dry up and for we to con­tin­ue. Ei­ther we might have to get a next piece of land some­where else to start to plant,” he added.

He said the wa­ter typ­i­cal­ly takes two weeks to re­cede from the land but they need an ad­di­tion­al month af­ter it does to al­low the soil to dry fur­ther.

Tassli­na Popalie has plant­ed in the project for at least 40 years and al­though they reg­u­lar­ly get flood­ed, she be­lieves this is the worst event since 2018.

“This is worse than 2018 flood. We haven’t re­ceived com­pen­sa­tion for 2018 flood as yet. We are still wait­ing on com­pen­sa­tion and it’s an on­go­ing thing,” she said.

She said this year she had suf­fered loss­es dur­ing all the ma­jor hol­i­days - Di­vali, Eid and now Christ­mas.

She said the on­ly land she has re­main­ing to plant on is at Or­ange Grove but she is un­cer­tain of the con­di­tion it’s in, as roads in­to the area are im­pass­able.