Agri­cul­ture is recog­nised as a ma­jor com­po­nent of food se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty. Food se­cu­ri­ty is a key na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty for T&T, with its strate­gic goal be­ing to “cre­ate a food se­cure na­tion” by pro­vid­ing ac­cess to ad­e­quate, nu­tri­tious, safe and af­ford­able food to all peo­ple at all times. Many coun­tries in the world have al­ready in­tro­duced food se­cu­ri­ty pro­grammes.

Yet on Oc­to­ber 4th, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is quot­ed as say­ing “there is not enough land.” As such, ac­cord­ing to Dr Row­ley, “agri­cul­ture will nev­er be as com­mer­cial­ly vi­able to the T&T econ­o­my as oil and gas be­cause the coun­try does not have the land space to be a glob­al play­er in the field.”

Each year, the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor re­ceives the low­est al­lo­ca­tion in the bud­get and this year it re­ceived the miser­ly sum of $.780 bil­lion. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has placed em­pha­sis on the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor as piv­otal to re­duc­ing the coun­try’s food im­port bill and in so do­ing is pur­su­ing ag­gres­sive­ly a strong di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion pol­i­cy. He hopes this would be able to add to this coun­try’s na­tion­al in­come, in­crease agri­cul­tur­al in­comes, con­tribute to food se­cu­ri­ty and ex­ports and boost the health of our na­tion. How­ev­er, is this prac­ti­ca­ble giv­en the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment that there is sim­ply not enough land?

The con­tri­bu­tion of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor to the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) in 2003 dipped be­low 1.0 per cent and has lan­guished at be­low 0.5 per cent of GDP since 2012. Com­men­su­rate­ly, this coun­try’s food im­port bill ex­pand­ed, con­sum­ing a con­sid­er­able pro­por­tion of our for­eign ex­change earn­ings.

Over the pe­ri­od 2003 to 2016, this coun­try’s food im­port bill was an es­ti­mat­ed US$8.91 bil­lion or TT$56.9 bil­lion.

The agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor is be­ing pri­ori­tised with in­cen­tives such as fi­nan­cial sup­port pro­grammes for farm­ers, with grants up to $100,000, and the $77 mil­lion Moru­ga Agro-Pro­cess­ing and Light In­dus­tri­al Park to be com­plet­ed by March 2019. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Min­is­ter in­tends that mod­ernised pro­duc­tion meth­ods through­out the sec­tor will be de­ployed and as well ways of im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of agri­cul­tur­al in­fra­struc­ture to help boost farm out­put. Farm­ing knowl­edge and in­ter­est in farm­ing are be­ing pro­mot­ed through train­ing pro­grammes and oth­er ini­tia­tives.

Ac­cord­ing to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter, dur­ing the last fis­cal year, 1,400 per­sons were trained in 85 farm­ing cours­es; 482,100 nurs­ery plants and plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al for crops such as co­coa, cit­rus and oth­er fruits were pro­duced and dis­trib­uted to farm­ers and the gen­er­al pub­lic and 1,900 ap­pli­ca­tions were processed un­der the Agri­cul­tur­al In­cen­tives Pro­gramme.

The agri­cul­ture sec­tor will al­so ben­e­fit from a myr­i­ad of in­cen­tives, in­clud­ing ex­emp­tion from in­come tax for ap­proved agri­cul­tur­al hold­ings, tax con­ces­sions on ve­hi­cles, equip­ment, raw ma­te­ri­als and oth­er in­puts. Sub­sidised loan pro­grammes, pur­pose-built mar­kets, plant­i­ng ma­te­ri­als, ac­cess roads and state land leas­es have al­so been promised by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert.

Re­vamp­ing an agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in an econ­o­my that has sur­vived on oil and gas for decades, cou­pled with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance’s ac­knowl­edge­ment that the agro-pro­cess­ing sec­tor is con­tin­u­ous­ly dwin­dling with lit­tle in­ter­est in full-time agri­cul­ture, is un­doubt­ed­ly go­ing to be a chal­lenge. Chang­ing the per­cep­tion of agri­cul­ture as a vi­able and rep­utable form of em­ploy­ment and in­come gen­er­a­tor will be the first step.

Sta­tis­tics show that food im­port crossed $5 bil­lion in 2012 and has stayed at around $5.6 bil­lion in the past two years, de­spite eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. It has been wide­ly claimed by the gov­ern­ment, econ­o­mists, agri­cul­tur­al­ists and every knowl­edge­able school of thought on di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion that agri­cul­tur­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is nec­es­sary to main­tain food se­cu­ri­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

The price of lo­cal­ly pro­duced food makes it un­favourable when com­pared to the cheap­er and more lu­cra­tive op­tions avail­able to con­sumers. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the farm­ers them­selves have claimed that over the years, there has been no clear pol­i­cy by the gov­ern­ment to in­crease the con­sump­tion of lo­cal goods with­in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

For sev­er­al years, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture has at­tempt­ed to cre­ate ‘buy­ing in’ to the many pro­pos­als and projects aimed at pro­mot­ing food se­cu­ri­ty and re­duc­ing our food im­port bill, with the lat­est be­ing the ‘farm to ta­ble’ ap­proach by the min­istry. How do these no­ble in­ten­tions align with the con­tra­dic­to­ry sen­ti­ments of the Prime Min­is­ter that “we have no land space to get in­volved in agri­cul­ture to pro­duce economies of scale, there are farms around the world big­ger than T&T and none of the earn­ings from what is gen­er­at­ed from agri­cul­ture will be able to sub­sti­tute ef­fec­tive­ly to what we have been ac­cus­tomed to with oil and gas.”

Mr Prime Min­is­ter, what then is the plan for our food se­cu­ri­ty by 2020? Are we doomed to suf­fer the same fate as our neigh­bours in Venezuela?