Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

A thou­sand pounds of tilapia feed is des­tined for Ja­maica, as a lo­cal com­pa­ny, We­FeedTT, has teamed up with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and the Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go to send a ma­jor ship­ment of re­lief sup­plies to Ja­maica, fol­low­ing the dev­as­ta­tion re­cent­ly ex­pe­ri­enced there.

Speak­ing dur­ing the han­dover, Jeru­el Saun­ders, co-founder of We­FeedTT, said the ini­tia­tive rep­re­sents both col­lab­o­ra­tion and Caribbean sol­i­dar­i­ty.

“We’re part­ner­ing with the Con­cerned Mus­lims of T&T as well as the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture,” Saun­ders said.

“We’re ship­ping a thou­sand pounds of tilapia feed, along with starter feed for ba­by fish, full cy­cle, and this is go­ing to­wards Ja­maica. We reached out to the aqua­cul­ture de­part­ment in Ja­maica, and they were very ex­cit­ed to re­ceive this feed.”

Saun­ders ex­plained that the ship­ment will be de­liv­ered in two parts, with the sec­ond batch sched­uled for next week.

Sup­port­ing the on­ly lo­cal fish food man­u­fac­tur­er, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Ravi Rati­ram praised the group’s in­no­va­tion—par­tic­u­lar­ly their work con­vert­ing in­va­sive species in­to agri­cul­tur­al val­ue.

“The We­FeedTT team has a very in­no­v­a­tive, cre­ative ap­proach to­wards pro­duc­ing fish food out of read­i­ly avail­able or­gan­ic prod­ucts,” Rati­ram said.

“One of their lat­est dis­cov­er­ies is the use of the gi­ant African snail to cre­ate feed for the poul­try in­dus­try. It’s be­ing test­ed, and we are hop­ing for pos­i­tive re­turns—trans­form­ing what was once a dev­as­tat­ing pest in­to some­thing us­able and some­thing that con­tributes to the growth of the agri­cul­ture sec­tor.”

Rati­ram al­so high­light­ed the broad­er na­tion­al re­lief ef­fort un­der­way for Ja­maica.

“We ex­tend heart­felt ap­pre­ci­a­tion and sup­port to the peo­ple of Ja­maica,” he said. “The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, through the Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs, has al­ready sent sup­port. Do­na­tions are com­ing in from the pub­lic ser­vice, mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions and var­i­ous min­istries. We are co­or­di­nat­ing to help our broth­ers and sis­ters re­cov­er from this dev­as­ta­tion.”

The min­is­ter fur­ther thanked the Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go for co­or­di­nat­ing ad­di­tion­al sup­plies.

“It’s not just the feed,” he said. “There are wa­ter, lum­ber, food­stuff, and oth­er ma­te­ri­als that the group has mo­bilised for Ja­maica. We thank every­one who con­tributed and en­cour­age cit­i­zens to con­tin­ue lend­ing a help­ing hand.”

The Ja­maican tilapia in­dus­try, es­tab­lished in 1976 and a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to food se­cu­ri­ty, suf­fered a cat­a­stroph­ic and crip­pling blow from Cat­e­go­ry 5 Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa in ear­ly No­vem­ber 2025.

Pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ments from the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Fish­eries and Min­ing re­port that 41 per cent of aqua­cul­ture farm­ers were af­fect­ed, with the over­all fish­eries sec­tor sus­tain­ing an es­ti­mat­ed J$5.76 bil­lion (ap­prox US$37.4 mil­lion) in loss­es.

This dam­age in­cludes mas­sive loss­es of tilapia stock (fry and ma­ture fish), de­struc­tion of crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture like pond dykes and em­bank­ments, and se­vere dis­rup­tion to the sup­ply chain; specif­i­cal­ly, blocked road­ways have im­ped­ed the de­liv­ery of es­sen­tial fish feed, threat­en­ing the sur­vival of re­main­ing stock and ex­ac­er­bat­ing food se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns across the is­land.

The ship­ment leaves for Ja­maica next Sat­ur­day.