RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Uni­fied Farm­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Shi­raz Khan is ques­tion­ing how the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to de­liv­er on its promis­es to re­duce the food im­port bill and ex­pand lo­cal agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, point­ing to an al­lo­ca­tion of $987 mil­lion for agri­cul­ture in the 2027 Bud­get.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Khan said farm­ers had heard sim­i­lar com­mit­ments from suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions but con­tin­ued to face com­pe­ti­tion from im­port­ed pro­duce, lim­it­ed pro­tec­tion for lo­cal pro­duc­tion and dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing land and agri­cul­tur­al as­sis­tance.

“It’s good that it’s men­tioned again, so we keep hear­ing it. But the re­al­i­ty of that, the last years of promis­es, even be­tween 2010 and 2015 and from 2015 to 2025, and now we keep hear­ing it again, just like last year,” he said.

He said the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to pro­vide spe­cif­ic fig­ures show­ing how much it in­tend­ed to re­duce food im­ports and how lo­cal farm­ers would be sup­port­ed to in­crease pro­duc­tion.

He called for da­ta on the vol­ume of food im­port­ed com­pared with lo­cal pro­duc­tion, say­ing this would help iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties for farm­ers to sup­ply more of the coun­try’s food re­quire­ments.

Khan said while the Bud­get out­lined sev­er­al ini­tia­tives, farm­ers need­ed to know how the pro­posed projects would be fund­ed and whether they would trans­late in­to in­creased lo­cal pro­duc­tion.

He al­so raised con­cerns about the fu­ture of the lo­cal dairy in­dus­try amid the an­tic­i­pat­ed clo­sure of Nestlé’s fresh milk op­er­a­tions.

Khan ques­tioned whether the milk pas­teuri­sa­tion plant at the Sug­ar Cane Feeds Cen­tre would be able to meet farm­ers’ needs, not­ing that the fa­cil­i­ty had been com­mis­sioned years ago.

He al­so called for a res­o­lu­tion to the long­stand­ing is­sue of land tenure, say­ing farm­ers with­out leas­es or for­mal reg­is­tra­tion of­ten strug­gled to ac­cess con­ces­sions, fi­nanc­ing and oth­er as­sis­tance.

While wel­com­ing ef­forts to fast-track lease ap­pli­ca­tions, Khan said farm­ers need­ed to see re­sults af­ter years of wait­ing. He al­so ques­tioned whether those with­out se­cure land tenure would qual­i­fy for the pro­posed agri­cul­tur­al sup­port pro­grammes.

“I hope that we could see at the end of the day that a promise kept, promise re­alised,” Khan said.

Mean­while, farmer Hanu­man Ram­sumair wel­comed the moves but said such pro­grammes will need time to ma­te­ri­alise.

“It’s a good idea, but we need more staff who are trained to deal with the is­sues,” he said. He added that farm­ers felt hope­less.

In his Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said the Gov­ern­ment was ex­pand­ing do­mes­tic agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion to re­duce the food im­port bill, strength­en food se­cu­ri­ty and cre­ate em­ploy­ment.

Tan­coo said the Gov­ern­ment had re­moved VAT from ma­chin­ery, equip­ment and in­puts for hy­dro­pon­ic and green­house farm­ing, ze­ro-rat­ed key ma­te­ri­als for cul­ti­va­tion and an­i­mal health, and re­moved Cus­toms Du­ty on feed used for live­stock.

He al­so high­light­ed the open­ing of the Brechin Cas­tle Agro-Pro­cess­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, which he said would cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for cas­sa­va flour, fruit and veg­etable pro­cess­ing and po­ten­tial ex­ports.

The Gov­ern­ment will al­so in­tro­duce a Farm Busi­ness For­mal­i­sa­tion Pro­gramme to as­sist reg­is­tered farm­ers with land tenure, busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion, record-keep­ing, fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, ac­cess to fi­nance and oth­er agri­cul­tur­al sup­port pro­grammes.

Tan­coo said the ini­tia­tive would op­er­ate as a one-stop shop and take im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

To en­cour­age greater youth par­tic­i­pa­tion in the sec­tor, he pro­posed ex­pand­ing the Agri­cul­tur­al In­tern­ship Pro­gramme from 30 in­terns to 100. The pro­gramme will of­fer op­por­tu­ni­ties across pri­ma­ry pro­duc­tion, agro-pro­cess­ing, tech­nol­o­gy, re­search, dis­tri­b­u­tion and oth­er agri­cul­tur­al ser­vices.

In To­ba­go, he said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is ex­pect­ed to ex­pand its Mega Farm Pro­gramme at Friend­ship Agro Park, con­tin­ue im­prov­ing agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads and in­crease tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial sup­port to farm­ers.