Namde­v­co needs more pro­duce from lo­cal farm­ers. They are look­ing for dasheen, cas­sa­va, plan­tain, paw­paw, bread­fruit, baigan, pump­kin, squash, bo­di, cu­cum­bers, hon­ey­dew mel­on, toma­toes and oth­er items.

Wayne In­niss, the Chair­man of Namde­v­co, told Guardian Me­dia that the com­pa­ny needs more lo­cal agro-prod­ucts for its $11 mil­lion Food Box Pro­gramme that is de­signed to bring re­lief to 25,000 fam­i­lies month­ly un­til Sep­tem­ber.

Speak­ing on Sat­ur­day from Namde­v­co’s pack­ing house at Lal­la Street, Ch­agua­nas, In­niss said farm­ers can call to make arrange­ments to sell their goods.

He said Namde­v­co will be pur­chas­ing items in bulk. "We are deal­ing in large quan­ti­ties, so I don’t ex­pect some­one would show up with 20 pounds of baigan."

He said the farm­ers should wash their pro­duce thor­ough­ly, and es­pe­cial­ly in the case of root veg­eta­bles, all the mud should be re­moved. "We would al­so pay them ad­di­tion­al­ly for the wash­ing and pack­ag­ing," he added. The pro­duce should then be placed in five-pound bags by the sup­pli­ers.

This is open to all farm­ers across T&T.

He said "Namde­v­co has 3,000 farm­ers on its Farm Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pro­gramme and these can be mon­i­tored how­ev­er, there are an­oth­er 20,000 plus farm­ers in T&T who are wel­comed to sup­ply pro­duce, but it will be dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine whether they are al­so pur­chas­ing pro­duce from oth­er farm­ers and sup­ply­ing Namde­v­co."

In­niss said Namde­v­co al­so plans to in­tro­duce eggs and a frozen soup pack that con­sists of lo­cal veg­eta­bles in the COVID re­lief ham­pers. He said the frozen soup pack should be dis­trib­uted lat­er this week.