Skip to playerSkip to main content
CCNTV6
  • 1 year ago
One farmer is speaking out on the composition of the Food Prices Committee. He questions whether the experts selected are aware of the real issues farmers face. Urvashi Tiwari Roopnarine reports.
Transcript
00:00As Cabinet appoints a Food Security and Food Prices Committee, some stakeholders express
00:06a lack of confidence that it will yield the desired outcomes, as valued input, they say,
00:13has been omitted.
00:14I complained to the minister that we don't have any of the ground forces, none of the
00:19producers in that committee, none of the people who actually, you know, are from the ground.
00:25And he said, well, give them a chance.
00:27And I said, well, I hope that they really achieve what they want.
00:30The 14-member committee is chaired by Nirmala Debesing, CEO of the National Agriculture
00:36Marketing and Development Corporation, NAMDEVCO, and it includes experts in agriculture, economics,
00:44nutrition, trade and consumer advocacy.
00:47On MSJ's Tuesday talk program, President of the Sheep and Goat Farmers Association, livestock
00:54Shiraz Khan says the so-called experts need to take a deep dive into the issues farmers
01:00face daily, which affect production.
01:04People feel that a drought is only in the dry season, but we face a very serious heat
01:09wave from the end of September into November.
01:12And some people lose animals, including myself, and we lose people producing eggs and all
01:19of that.
01:20We lose a lot of farmers.
01:21We lose a lot of birds and so on because of lack of water.
01:23If you could recall, there was a big problem with water availability and all of that.
01:28So I am wondering how deep this committee is going to look into what is this affecting
01:34the production.
01:36Professor Uri Clement has now dipped his feet into entrepreneurship as an agri-processor
01:41of alternative flour.
01:43He says the fluctuation of prices of root tubers presents a challenge.
01:48People are saying, I have a family of five people, how am I going to buy this expensive
01:54flour to feed my family?
01:55And the challenge really is that sometimes the prices of the root tubers, for example
02:00cassava, when we started three years ago, it was $2 a pound, and it went all the way
02:05up to $5 a pound.
02:07And therefore, if I had to make one pound of sweet potato flour, it would cost me $25
02:11just for the raw material alone.
02:13And if we have to get the food import bill down, we need to focus efforts on specificity,
02:20says Darrell Rampersad, president of the Agricultural Society, speaking on a separate program.
02:27What makes up the food import bill?
02:29What consumes the food import bill?
02:31What items on the food import bill can be successfully grown in Trinidad?
02:36What are some of the staples that we consume in Trinidad and Tobago on a daily basis, which
02:41would include rice and flour, of course, sometimes three to four times a day, and
02:45how could we look into increasing the production or manufacturing of such commodities at the
02:52same time?
02:53For Rishi Tiwari, Rupnur Ain, TV6 News.
Be the first to comment
Add your comment