UNC’s Plan for Agriculture
Now that the rainy season is upon us, many citizens are living in deep fear of the devastating annual flooding it usually brings, which destroys property, livestock, agricultural crops and farmlands.
A report in today’s Guardian report keenly highlights this plight. It notes that residents of St John’s Trace, Avocat, are bracing for the worst possible floods this year.
This is due to the ongoing failure of the Rowley Government, through the Works/Transport Minister to repair flood gates in the area since 2016.
These are needed to regulate the water flow throughout the Oropouche Drainage Basin. So far, residents say they have lost crops and 100 acres of farmlands as a result.
This is despite the Rowley Government allegedly spending $32million on flood issues since 2018, and allocating $100 million this year for desilting watercourses.
Only last week, I spoke about Minister Rohan Sinanan’s ongoing, highly questionable spending of millions of taxpayers’ dollars behind these ghost flood plans. The plight of the Avocat residents therefore begs the question once more—where is the money really going?
One Avocat resident also notes that in 1965, the area used to be the southland’s food basket “but now it is a disaster.
You hardly have people planting anymore.”
The report also highlights the Rowley Government’s ongoing reduction of funding for the Agriculture Ministry.
I raised this crucial issue at the last UNC’s virtual political meeting, where I noted that T&T currently spends $6 billion per year on food imports.
As the Covid-19 pandemic shows, our inability to feed ourselves in an age of global lockdowns and a devastating economic recession can put us at serious risk for drastic food shortages in the near future.
I have said that the UNC’s National Economic Transformation Master Plan places agriculture as the main pillar of our economic diversification strategy. It would lead to massive job creation and reestablish T&T’s food security, with proposed initiatives like:
*Creating Agricultural Parks with all necessary infrastructure, and focusing on local crops, organic ‘superfoods’ and non-traditional export crops.
*Implementing an Agriculture Insurance Protection System to protect farmers from losses incurred through flooding, drought, pest and diseases, praedial larceny, fire and business interruption.
*Investing in Research and Development, and encouraging innovation in Agricultural practices, processes, technology and commercializing new products.
*Working with farmers and private sector investors to capitalize on global demand for non-traditional food crops which offer lucrative export opportunities, such as hot peppers
.
*Inviting private investors to establish an agro-processing complex to process the supply from the agricultural parks. It will be created through the lease of 25,000 acres of former Caroni lands to registered farmers and private investors.
Notably, a Guardian report dated Mar 25, 2020 states that the Agriculture Minister admitted to not having a food security policy in light of the Covid-19 crisis.
Five weeks later, the newspapers published heartbreaking pictures of desperate, hungry citizens lining up from the night before to collect food hampers from charities the following day.
Yet, on May 1, 2020, Minister Rambharat cruelly dismissed this widespread, heart-wrenching suffering.
He incredulously told the Senate there was ‘nothing to suggest’ the existence of a hunger crisis in T&T.
Ironically, it was his own boss, Prime Minister Rowley, who said that ‘agriculture will never be as commercially viable to the TT economy’. This alone tells us where T&T will end up if the Rowley Government gets back into office.
They will continue to cruelly neglect the agricultural sector and deliberately fail to secure our nation’s crucial food stability. Citizens may therefore end up facing a permanent hunger and starvation crisis, very like Venezuela right now under the Maduro regime.
Is this the country you thought you would grow up to live in? It is truly time for PM Rowley and his failed Government to go.