Revenge of the stepchild

Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General opened the United Nations conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Accra, Ghana on Sunday with a warning to delegates that higher food prices risk wiping out progress toward reducing global poverty and eventually hurting world growth and security.

Ban pledged to use the full force of the world body to tackle the price rises, which threaten to increase hunger and poverty and have already sparked food riots in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and nearer home, in Haiti.

"I will immediately establish a high-powered task force comprised of eminent experts and leading authorities to address this issue," he announced.

His speech far away on the African continent sounded familiar and similar to what the people of Trinidad and Tobago have been hearing from the Patrick Manning government for months. The prime minister keeps promising measures to deal with the problem while at the same time shifting blame to anyone but those who must take responsibility – members of his government.

Now a head honcho of the governing People's National Movement (PNM) is talking about buying food from "sources" in Latin America at one third of the current cost. John Donaldson was short on details, saying only that the consumer affairs minister Peter Taylor would have the details Tuesday. That's the same Peter Taylor who urged people to boycott supermarkets and brushed off looting as "routine" practice along the Beetham Highway.

And from London where he is at the bedside of his ailing spouse, Basdeo Panday is calling for a people's revolt against the present regime.

"You don't have to wait five years for change, you can bring the Government down by demonstrations and marching, but the people must have the courage…If they do nothing, then they must simply be prepared to suffer the consequences," he said in an interview with the local media.

In the end, the reality remains the same. People are hungry and cannot afford food in a nation that is awash with billions of dollars from an unprecedented oil boom that has seen the price of oil rise beyond US$115 a barrel.

Many years ago Professor George Sammy warned Trinidad and Tobago to nurture agriculture because a nation can never be independent unless it can feed itself. "You can walk naked," he told an agriculture conference, "but you cannot go without food."

But nobody was listening. Nobody important that is. Agriculture remained, as it did through every administration, a stepchild and a pariah.

Every year farmers begged for help to arrest the problems of flooding and access roads. Every year they implored those in authority to create the mechanisms to make agriculture attractive and profitable. And every year they were left with an empty begging bowl.

Today that neglect is showing. Food prices are steadily climbing, the government keeps making promises and the army of the hungry grows.

And Dr Sammy’s predictions have come true. Part of the food problem is that nations that grow food for export are hoarding it for themselves or selling it where they can get the best price in the new globalized world. And the other part of the problem is a failed agriculture policy.

Every Trinidad and Tobago government has refused to help the struggling small farmer cope with flooding, access roads problems, technical expertise, funding and marketing. For the most part farmers provided a service. And nobody was listening when they asked for help because despite their problems, the food reached the market.

Today we are hearing of hundreds of small farms, allocation of lands for a demonstration farm, mega-farms with Cuban experts and an ambitious Caricom food plan proposed by Guyana. But it’s all talk. And the most fundamental and basic problems remain.

Even if some of these things happen, it would take years to see the result. And many of the same recurring infrastructure, economic and logistical problems would continue to undermine agriculture.

And then there is the politics of agriculture.

"We try to bribe dem by keeping Caroni open, but dey still aint vote for we." That’s a direct quote from the late PNM Cabinet minister Ronald J. Williams who called his boss, George Chambers, "a damn fool" for not shutting down the sugar company that sustained a community of nearly a quarter of a million people, most of whom were perceived to be pro-opposition.

Two decades later Manning did it, ostensibly to save the plundering of the treasury by a company that was existing on a subsidy averaging one million dollars a day. He called it the best decision he has ever made.

But he is yet to demonstrate the wisdom in taking that decision. Thousands of former sugar workers are still waiting for the land his government promised them, land that would have been producing food today.

Even a court judgment has not accelerated action on these farms. And I would wager that we are not going to see those farms soon.

There is a reason for the disdain for agriculture: politics.

Manning once told me that a state enterprise did not exist for profit. “It is there for social stability, social stability,” he insisted. If that is so, why close down a state industry like Caroni (1975) Limited? If any state enterprise qualified under Manning’s definition, it was Caroni.

But Manning did it for political spite in an irrational move that was not based on economic or social planning. It was an opportunity to crush the opposition base and destroy its leadership.

It didn’t work.

In fact, Manning could very well have been on the opposition benches if Winston Dookeran and his tribe had heeded the call of the United National Alliance (UNC-A) to fight Manning in 2007 as a united team. So much for dispossessed sugar workers.

That is why those farms for former Caroni workers will remain a promise and an illusion. That is why agriculture remains a stepchild. And that is why the nation is unable to feed itself.

If you look at Caroni alone in the context of a national agricultural strategy you would be amazed at some of the truth that got smothered in the spin about the company being a drain on taxpayers and the economy.

First, it employed nearly 10,000 people directly and a further 6,000 cane farmers produced cane for the factories. That’s 16,000 people and their dependants – a total of about 64,000. These people supported the shops and other businesses that grew up in the agricultural communities. The essential trade provided tens of thousands of small entrepreneurs who worked and lived, looked after their families and upgraded their standards of living.

In other words, that state enterprise that Manning shut down provided the “social stability” that was so important to him.

The spin only portrayed Caroni workers as illiterate cane cutters and field workers. In reality Caroni was much more than that. It was also a community of mechanics, drivers, heavy machine operators, clerical workers, computer technicians, managers, engineers and doctors.

Here are some other facts Manning didn’t tell anybody:

• Caroni represented 44.7 per cent of the GDP in the agricultural sector
• Caroni injected TT$680 million into the national economy every year, including guaranteed foreign exchange from sugar and rum exports
• Caroni workers earned $447 million a year and paid $32 in direct taxes to the government
• Caroni subsidized the state medical services by providing FREE medical services to all its staff and its dependents – more than 60,000 people – and provided free prescription medicines to them
• Caroni subsidized the local government authorities by providing land for cemeteries, parks and recreation grounds and assisted by maintaining these facilities
• Caroni subsidized the state housing plans by providing land and loans to its workers
• Caroni subsidized the business sector – particularly the soft drink industry – to the tune of $60 million a year
• Caroni operated profitable beef, rum and citrus subsidiaries
• Caroni had a fully mechanized rice subsidiary capable of providing domestic needs
  
• Caroni owned assets valued at more than one billion dollars

In short the company that was a drain on the economy and a burden on taxpayers was taking one million dollars a day and giving back nearly two. It was not an economic parasite. And more important, it provided social and economic stability to an entire community and the nation.

It was the golden goose of agriculture than Manning killed. And contrary to what Manning said in the last general election, keeping Caroni open did not condemn the children of sugar workers to remain in "slavery."

Yes slaves and indentured labourers built the industry, but their children have moved on. The lawyers, doctors, politicians, white-collar workers and leaders who run the affairs of the nation in the public and private sectors are children or grandchildren of sugar workers.

Sugar built the nation.

And while sugar cane may have lost its economic appeal, the land and the expertise existed to create a revolution in agriculture that would have been the envy of the region and the world.From the ashes of sugar, Trinidad and Tobago could still build a sustainable agriculture sector.

But will it?

Trinidad and Tobago’s wealth has been its curse. It has generated waste and avenues for corruption while failing to address the most basic human need – food. It has created an army of “dependents” whose gratitude would provide the political muscle for those in power to remain there.

And the reality is there is no need to keep agriculture in the dark ages or to fear those who would benefit from a sound agricultural strategy. It’s not too late.

The floods are coming, the roads need fixing, and the lands need to be cultivated. The people are ready. But is the government ready to help create a revolution in agriculture or is it content to just throw around its energy windfall and nurture its import culture?

That’s a question the politicians have to answer. If they don’t people would have to eat the money. And that means the masses would continue to starve.