by Ra­mona Ram­di­al

Over the week­end, Trinidad and To­ba­go had the ho­n­our of host­ing the Agri In­vest­ment Fo­rum and Ex­po II where a num­ber of re­gion­al lead­ers at­tend­ed in­clud­ing Guyana’s Pres­i­dent, Dr Mo­hammed Ir­faan Ali, who was al­so on an of­fi­cial state vis­it.

The open­ing was al­so graced by Pres­i­dent of Suri­name, Chan­drikaper­sad San­tokhi, who is al­so the Chair­man of Cari­com; Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos, Mia Mot­t­ley; Prime Min­is­ter of St. Vin­cent & the Grenadines, Dr. Ralph Gon­salves and Prime Min­is­ter of Haiti, Ariel Hen­ry. Stake­hold­ers from with­in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in the re­gion were al­so in at­ten­dance.

It was a com­mend­able ini­tia­tive to host the Agri Fo­rum as there is a thrust from Cari­com to fo­cus on re­gion­al food se­cu­ri­ty. The re­cent short­ages of wheat and oth­er im­port­ed food sup­plies “post-pan­dem­ic”, ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the on­go­ing Rus­so-Ukrain­ian war, has shocked us in­to re­al­is­ing how very much de­pen­dent we are on in­ter­na­tion­al sup­plies.

Our forex short­age, due to de­creas­ing rev­enues, is pour­ing fu­el on burn­ing re­serves and the banks are ra­tioning the forex sup­ply, giv­ing pri­or­i­ty and pref­er­ence to large cor­po­ra­tions while the SMEs and gen­er­al pub­lic crowd the beg­ging bowl.

The Agri Fo­rum was a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for the na­tion’s Op­po­si­tion Leader and her con­tin­gent to at­tend as a dis­play of unit­ed Trin­bag­on­ian sol­i­dar­i­ty and na­tion­al con­sen­sus in favour of re­gion­al uni­ty, with food se­cu­ri­ty as pri­or­i­ty. It would have been a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for her to make mag­nan­i­mous waves in her cam­paign to re­turn to Prime Min­is­ter­ship. Her ab­sen­teeism pre­sent­ed PM Row­ley and his Gov­ern­ment the full at­ten­tion of the re­gion­al lead­ers in pro­gres­sive pur­suit. The UNC lead­er­ship in­stead sent a hand­ful of Coun­cil­lors and ac­tivists, led by the UNC shad­ow for agri­cul­ture to PROTEST the event in­stead. It got even more bizarre when one of the pro­test­ers spoke about monies owed to them since 2010 not re­al­iz­ing that the UNC led Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship was in of­fice dur­ing that time.

Even more ridicu­lous were “the il­lit­er­ate state­ments made by Mr. Safraz Ali”, ac­cord­ing to Vice Pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­ture So­ci­ety, Ms. De­vi­ka Sookhoo. Mr Ali is a UNC Coun­cil­lor and “mem­ber of the com­mit­tee of man­age­ment of the ASTT” and its Vice-Pres­i­dent sought to speed­i­ly dis­tance the as­so­ci­a­tion from his in­volve­ment in the protest. She said that the ASTT ful­ly sup­port­ed the Agri Fo­rum and will­ing­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed, con­grat­u­lat­ing the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and the Gov­ern­ment. As such, one could sur­mise that agri­cul­ture was not the pri­or­i­ty of the protest, pol­i­tics was. “Mon­day Night Fo­rum” giv­en pri­or­i­ty over the “Agri In­vest­ment Fo­rum” per­haps? What will that protest achieve?

We are a floun­der­ing na­tion to­day due to such di­vi­sive pol­i­tics, be­got­ten of the PNM and to which the cur­rent UNC lead­er­ship re­li­gious­ly sub­scribes. In de­vel­oped coun­tries, those who gov­ern have got­ten there through the com­pro­mise of nar­row par­ti­san in­ter­ests in ser­vice of the greater good. Get­ting to de­vel­oped na­tion sta­tus is no easy feat and it takes an en­tire coun­try to find com­mon ground to make that hap­pen. Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion must work to­geth­er to trans­form and im­prove the lives of the cit­i­zen­ry. En­vi­able na­tions from the US and the UK to Sin­ga­pore and New Zealand have evolved to first world sta­tus be­cause their politi­cians have put na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment ahead of par­ti­san pro­cliv­i­ty. Now that we are be­ing forced by glob­al cir­cum­stance to change the way we live and what we con­sume, we would ex­pect all of our politi­cians to get on board to as­sist with na­tion build­ing ini­tia­tives. Sad­ly, the per­son­al­i­ties who cur­rent­ly hold high of­fice on­ly know one way of gov­er­nance: di­vi­sive pol­i­tics. They have been able to di­vide us on race and eth­nic­i­ty so that we end up with in­com­pe­tent, lazy lead­ers on both sides of the di­vide.

We must en­cour­age any gov­ern­ment when they un­der­take projects to make agri­cul­ture at­trac­tive to the youths: the dis­tri­b­u­tion of land, easy ac­cess to loans and tech­ni­cal skills de­vel­op­ment work­shops. Hope­ful­ly such an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment is not mere op­tics but sus­tained so that we can see these ini­tia­tives lit­er­al­ly bear fruit. Our youths need to be ful­ly sup­port­ed and en­cour­aged. I know a few youths who have gone in­to farm­ing and are do­ing quite well. Most of them had in­vest­ed time and mon­ey in­to more “pres­ti­gious” aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suits and on­ly turned to farm­ing af­ter they failed to se­cure em­ploy­ment in their pri­ma­ry ar­eas of ex­per­tise. They haven’t re­gret­ted their switch to agri­cul­ture at all though.

It was heart­en­ing to see Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine ex­er­cis­ing po­lit­i­cal ma­tu­ri­ty by at­tend­ing the Agri Fo­rum. He un­der­stands that it was a Trin­bag­on­ian op­por­tu­ni­ty and did not al­low it to be a “PNM event”. Elect­ed of­fi­cials have a du­ty to all of the peo­ple re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, race, eth­nic­i­ty or gen­der. With To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor set to bloom soon, he would have gone to see what the re­gion has to of­fer to make the is­land a pre­mi­um tourist des­ti­na­tion. To­bag­on­ian agri­cul­tur­al sup­ports could es­tab­lish a rich sym­bio­sis with its am­bi­tions in tourism. Good go­ing, Far­ley! You showed up the my­opia of oth­er ‘lead­ers’. Af­ter all, it seems ob­vi­ous that grow­ing food would be a ba­sic ne­ces­si­ty in build­ing a na­tion.