PM admits food crisis, says 7,000 farms producing food

Prime Minister Patrick Manning has acknowledged a food crisis in Trinidad and Tobago, contradicting a statement by Agriculture Minister Arnold Piggott who said last week that there is no crisis.

Read story - no food crisis

Speaking at the opening of the Trinidad and Tobago Manufacturers’ Association’s Trade and Investment Convention (TIC 2008), at the Centre of Excellence, Macoya Wednesday Manning sounded an alarm that high energy costs, increasing demand and lower production are all contributors to the "potentially destabilizing rise in the cost of food".

And he called for a partnership between the Government and the private to "rise to the occasion if the nation is to surmount the challenges that are before us."

In acknowledging the problem of rising food costs he cautioned the business community about the temptation to exploit people. At the same time he appealed to consumers to "exercise greater discipline and discretion than before."

He said the challenges the nation faces in dealing with food security present an opportunity to accelerate the development of agriculture. While government is tying to reduce the cost of imported food by finding alternative sources of supply it is putting emphasis on greater national food production and modernization of the agricultural sector, he said.

And Manning invited the business community to invest in agriculture, noting that, "Shortages and high prices ought to make the food market an attractive one for investment."

He announced again that government is investing in 17 large farms. And he stated, "The government has already created 7,000 new farms from the lands of the former Caroni (1975) Ltd, where food production has started."

That pronouncement shocked Rudranath Indarsingh, president of the All Trinidad Sugar and General Workers Union (ATSGWU).

He told the Trinidad Express no former Caroni workers has received any contractual assurance, proof of tenure or leases to any portion of land owned by the former sugar company.

"I must have an eye problem or amnesia because I cannot say I can remember ever seeing any evidence of these 7,000 farms," Indarsingh told the paper.

Read commentary: Revenge of the stepchild

The matter of the farms has been on the government agenda since it closed the sugar company more than five years ago. A High Court judgment has ordered the state to complete the land distribution by the end of June.

But Manning’s new Trade and Industry Minister, Dr Lenny Saith, said he did not have the Government's program of delivery for the lands.

In her address at the opening function, TTMA President Karen de Montbrun criticized the Government's promises about agricultural development.

"The Government announced that further investment would be made in the agricultural sector with the creation of mega-farms. However, almost two years after the initial announcement, nothing has been done," she said.

In a related development, Tableland farmers, who produce food crops on 1500 acres of land, are pleading with the government to allow them to grow food on abandoned former sugar lands, promising to solve the nation’s food problem.

"Give us 50 acres of land each or give us a mega-farm. We have the capability and the track record and, within no time at all, we would have an abundance of food to feed the nation as well as export to other countries," they said.