“When you buy fast food, you know where the lettuce comes from? The tomatoes and cucumbers?” asks one South-based farmer.
“All imported. Imagine these international restaurants and fast food places come here and we send all that money back to the US, but they don’t support the local economy.”
Vegetables and fruits was the second highest commodity to be imported by T&T, and the highest in terms of proportion of total food import values, according to data from the Central Statistical Office (CSO) for 2011.
Agricultural Society of T&T (ASTT) members said Government must look at the idea of introducing legislation which requires all foreign food distributors or restaurants in T&T to purchase at least 30 to 40 per cent of their supplies from local farmers.
It is a measure farmers who utilised the wholesale markets in Macoya and Debe support once the mechanisms and infrastructure is in place to facilitate an increase in production.
“Unless you have a strong policy framework to protect and see further development of the agriculture sector, we aren’t going anywhere,” ASTT President Dhano Sookhoo said in an interview.
“Farmers need legislation to protect local production.”
Sookhoo said the ASTT had proposed that legislation needed to be brought to ensure that local produce was not sidelined.
“When people go to the grocery, they must have the option. Local produce must be right near the imported produce. Unless Government puts in the enabling environment what’s the use talking about diversity.”
Low production has had an adverse effect on foreign exchange. In the past, T&T exported a significant amount of agricultural produce, including pumpkins, hot peppers, paw paw, callalloo bush, sweet pepper, tomato, cabbage, cucumber, pineapple and watermelon. In lieu of legislation, both the ASTT and National Agricultural Marketing Development Corporation (Namdevco) are holding discussions with some of the major importers of produce to buy local.
The discussions with local importers of foreign produce are aimed at facilitating the use of goods from local farmers by distributors and to increase exports and earn foreign exchange.
While production volumes are too low, Namdevco is working with farmers to increase production.
According to the CSO, the value of food imports increased to $4.7 billion in 2011 from approximately $4 billion in 2010. Caricom imports US$2 billion in food annually.
A 2013 economic bulletin from the Central Bank shows that 18 per cent of the food bill was due to the importation of fruits and vegetables, while 14.5 per cent was dairy.
The report said an increasing demand for food, coupled with constrained production and rising commodity prices, fuelled an expansion of the food import bill in 2010 and 2011 after a decline in 2009 associated with a softening of global food prices.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations shows that global food prices have softened again in 2015, showing a 14.5 per cent decrease from the previous year.
Shortage of workers
While farmers complained of land issues for production, another popular complaint was lack of workers interested in the sector.
“Farming for me has been a family business,” said Chaguanas vendor and farmer Anita Singh.
“It’s hard work and not a lot of money, so many people don’t want to do it.”
Ganesh Gangapersad, CEO of Namdevco, in an interview at his Debe office last week, said thousands of workers left the agriculture sector during the construction boom in 2008.
“The sector was made up of mostly-unskilled labourers and so when construction accelerated in this country, many left the sector for higher wages.
“Now that some of the major projects are on hold, the unskilled set are now available for the agriculture sector.
“We can capitalise on working with the farmers to get production back up by channeling unskilled labourers to agriculture,” Gangapersad said.
Farmers have also left the sector
A survey conducted by the ministry of agriculture in 2014 estimated just over 4,000 farmers in the country, a decrease of approximately, 16,000 as compared to 2004.
Namdevco works with over 1,200 farmers.
While people are interested in farming, there is a challenge keeping them in agriculture.
Couva farmer Chaitram Seetal has been a farmer for over 30 years. He and his wife farm coconuts, plantains and cassava.
After decades of farming, he wants to put down his tools and try something new.
“I wish I had gone to work with the government after school. I had my subjects. I could have done well and worked my way up through the system. Farming is not giving me a good life at all.”
Seetal said his life of early mornings and hard labour had resulted in problems accessing water for his crops and workers frequently leaving to earn higher salaries.
“We have land in Couva and by Grand Bazaar there, but I just want to stop.”
Water worries
Access to water has become a major problem for islands across the Caribbean, with the region facing the worst drought in five years during 2015.
In February, the Barbados-based Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) issued a statement that several regional countries had been placed under immediate drought watch or warning for 2016.
CDEMA said in a statement in February that drought alerts have been issued by the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) for several countries up to March 2016.
It said drought warning had been issued for Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, northern Guyana, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, T&T and northern Suriname.
Gangapersad said so far, farmers had been able to meet expected production volumes despite the drought, but added that improving farmers’ access to water was necessary in order to increase production.
“We have to get a more-efficient way to deliver quality water to farmers. One of the ideas we are toying with is to use bore holes to do well water. It’s done in Barbados right now.
Farmers would pay a small fee to ensure that it is managed properly.
“If the dry season continues to be as harsh as it is, we can end up in a situation where production levels begin to drop.
“It’s very dry. We have high wind and no rain.”
Gangapersad said water was evaporating from the plants, faster than the crops could absorb.
He said Namdevco was working with the Met Office on weather forecasting for farmers.
“What we will be able to do is access the predictions and plant for it.”