In the face of crit­i­cal short­ages of live­stock feeds in To­ba­go, Dr Michele Singh, Di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and In­no­va­tion at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Cave Hill, Bar­ba­dos, is call­ing for the cul­ti­va­tion of lo­cal feed­stuff for do­mes­tic live­stock rear­ing.

Dr Singh’s call comes as the live­stock in­dus­try faces a de­cline.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Dr Singh warned that with­out al­ter­na­tive feed so­lu­tions, fam­i­lies could grap­ple with food short­ages in the fu­ture.

She said the glob­al sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions have ex­posed the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of small na­tions like T&T to feed short­ages.

High­light­ing the reper­cus­sions of these short­ages on farm­ers and over­all pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, Singh said: “Farm­ers have been forced to re­duce live­stock pop­u­la­tions and switch to dif­fer­ent feed­ing strate­gies which im­pact over­all pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.”

She added: ” Be­cause the T&T live­stock sec­tor is pri­mar­i­ly de­pen­dent on im­port­ed feeds, I be­lieve we will face grow­ing chal­lenges in feed­ing small ru­mi­nants, large ru­mi­nants, poul­try, and pigs. One rec­om­men­da­tion is to start uti­liz­ing al­ter­na­tive feed­stocks and in­vest in the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal al­ter­na­tives to re­duce the de­mand for im­port­ed feeds.”

She not­ed that ba­sic an­i­mal feed con­sists of fats, pro­teins, and car­bo­hy­drates, with pro­tein be­ing the costli­est com­po­nent.

How­ev­er, she said lo­cal for­ages such as Leu­cae­na, Mul­ber­ry, Trichan­thera, and Moringa can be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to feeds.

“While re­search has demon­strat­ed their ef­fi­cien­cy in feed­ing an­i­mals, T&T lacks an abun­dant sup­ply of these for­ages. We don’t even have ten acres of any one of these for­ages. We want to see more in­vest­ment in lo­cal feed in­gre­di­ents,” she ex­plained.

Say­ing cul­ti­va­tion of these crops can be a lu­cra­tive source of in­come for farm­ers, Dr Singh called on the re­gion to em­brace the cul­ti­va­tion of these for­ages.

She not­ed that decades of re­search was done at The UWI not­ing that the Sug­ar Cane Feeds Cen­ter was es­tab­lished to in­ves­ti­gate, eval­u­ate and pro­duce lo­cal feeds ini­tial­ly from sug­ar cane and its de­riv­a­tives.

Not­ing the trou­bling trend in an­i­mal hus­bandry, Dr Singh said farms have di­min­ished in size and the num­ber of live­stock farm­ers has al­so de­creased.

She at­trib­uted this de­cline to a lack of in­vest­ment in agri­cul­ture as well as de­pen­dence on im­port­ed food.

De­spite lo­cal­ly pro­duced meats be­ing more ex­pen­sive, Dr Singh said they of­fer high­er nu­tri­tion­al val­ue. She al­so said crops for an­i­mal feed should be cul­ti­vat­ed com­mer­cial­ly

“There is am­ple un­used land un­der the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture which can be leased. With a de­cline of over 60 per cent in live­stock farm­ers, even gov­ern­ment-run fa­cil­i­ties show emp­ty pens and de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions,” she lament­ed.

She fur­ther em­pha­sized the ur­gency of ad­dress­ing cli­mate change, in­creas­ing heat lev­els, and ris­ing sea lev­els, all of which have sub­stan­tial en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts on dai­ly life.

Dr Singh rec­om­mend­ed the cul­ti­va­tion of for­ag­ing birds like quail and guinea birds, as well as goats, which are bet­ter suit­ed to lo­cal con­di­tions.

Mean­while, Agron­o­mist Akanath Singh al­so sup­port­ed the cul­ti­va­tion of feed­stock al­ter­na­tives. He said Trinidad has been grow­ing these types of for­ages for years, stress­ing the need for com­mer­cial­iza­tion and larg­er-scale lo­cal pro­duc­tion.

“We do al­ready have small-scale Moringa Farms in T&T where it is processed as a pow­der and used for med­ical pur­pos­es. I have per­son­al­ly worked with many gar­den­ers cul­ti­vat­ing Mul­ber­ry which has shown ex­cel­lent growth and yields,” Singh said.

He added: “We can des­ig­nate ar­eas for the es­tab­lish­ment of for­age re­serves which can be used dur­ing pe­ri­ods of low fod­der avail­abil­i­ty. Such ar­eas must not be prone to flood­ing and will re­quire prop­er plan­ning, mon­i­tor­ing and ex­pert guid­ance.”

Ear­li­er this week Live­stock farm­ers in To­ba­go com­plained of feed short­ages. They say chick­ens have re­sort­ed to can­ni­bal­ism due to a lack of feed.

PHO­TO: Di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and In­no­va­tion at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Cave Hill, Bar­ba­dos, Dr Michele Singh.