The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) may still be imprisoned in a condition of inertia in the matter of embracing a collective initiative to shore up its food security and reduce its mammoth food security bill, but as has become customary in the region, individual countries are sometimes inclined to make gestures which customarily fall short of going ‘the whole nine yards’ in terms of becoming a building block on which the edifice of a food-secure Caribbean will stand.
Trinidad and Tobago is one of those countries in the region that ‘thinks big’ in terms of conceptualising projects in its agricultural sector that can help lay the foundation of Caribbean food security. Last week, another such gesture materialised in the form of a disclosure from the country’s Minister of Agriculture, Clarence Rambharat, that the country’s private sector had already pumped TT$200 million into the local agricultural sector and in addition to that financial impetus, there were plans afoot to increase the application of technology not just to boost production in the sector but also to expand the range of agricultural produce cultivated in the country.
Seeking, it seems, to deliver the message that the country had already ‘left the blocks’ in pursuit of its latest objectives in the sector, the Minister disclosed that approval had already been given for several greenhouse projects to be initiated and that these are intended to provide impetus to climate-smart agriculture. Seeking to provide a measure of proof of the twin-island republic’s push to have its agricultural drive gather a head of steam, the Minister’s cited a private investment in a TT$60 million state-of-the-art, technology-driven agro-processing facility as an indication of private sector confidence in the direction in which the agricultural sector is going.
“At this time we have about $200 million in private sector investments being undertaken – livestock, local duck hatcheries, greenhouses, agro-processing, parboiled rice, local dairy,” Rambharat is quoted as saying, adding that other named investments had already gotten underway in the sector.
Whether this marks yet another ‘beginning’ of an initiative by Trinidad and Tobago to seek to kickstart a fresh upsurge of regional interest in Caribbean food security is hard to tell since Caribbean Agricultural Week, which would have been the ideal time frame within which to set in train yet another regional initiative to get the agriculture sector ‘up and running’ has entered its final day, today, without so much of a collective whimper from the region as a whole.
With regional food security now ‘up there’ with climate change as high priority items for the Caribbean, we have now lost the luxury of bellyaching over what is past and gone. Contextually, it was good to see the T&T Agriculture Minister seeking to provide an assurance that major multi-million dollar private sector investments in the agriculture sector in Trinidad and Tobago will not ultimately marginalise “conventional small farmers.” This incidentally, has been one of the complaints of small farmers and agro-processors in Guyana who have persistently told this newspaper that a lack of access to funding from the conventional banking sector and the paucity of viable borrowing options continue to place limits on their growth potential.
Seemingly with an eye to reducing the country’s multi-million dollar food import bill, the T&T Agriculture Minister is reported as saying that many of the emerging projects in the country’s agriculture sector seek to target export markets with a view to displacing imported products used in local restaurants and supermarkets even though he reportedly conceded that there will always be a percentage of imports on Trinidad and Tobago’s plates as well as the risks that go with it. He said that the challenge facing the country is that of changing consumption patterns to improve health profiles.
Trinidad and Tobago, the Minister said, was also interested in the acceleration of greenhouse development, adding that the country’s incentives for protected agriculture systems are designed to promote the establishment and management of new, fully-enclosed greenhouses and new partially enclosed shadehouses for the country’s vegetable sector.
Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago have, in the past, taken the lead in announcing high-sounding bilateral initiatives designed to build the region’s agricultural base and strengthen its food security profile, though such initiatives have been known to dissolve quietly on the altar of inaction.
