00:00Trinidad and Tobago may not have the traditional Independence Day celebrations in 2025,
00:07but according to Agriculture Minister Ravi Rattaram,
00:11true independence is measured by the productivity of a nation.
00:15Our food import bill has consistently been increasing.
00:18Now we have gone over $7 billion in food import.
00:24And what we have seen happening over the last 10 years
00:27is that the contribution of agriculture to GDP has declined by over $200 million.
00:35So if it is agriculture continue to decline and the food import continues to go up,
00:40what will happen in the event of war or pandemic or some kind of logistic crisis that the country face?
00:46We'll starve.
00:48Because we are in a position where we cannot feed ourselves.
00:51And the only time we can celebrate independence as a nation,
00:55it is only when a nation can feed itself, it is then that nation is truly independent.
01:01The minister says it is this government's mandate to ensure that this goal is realized.
01:06Our mandate is to reduce the food import bill by $2 billion.
01:12To increase agriculture contribution to GDP,
01:15we must move from where we are less than 2% to 5%.
01:20And we must also stimulate the earning of a foreign exchange
01:26where we will be able to export over $1 billion in agriculture production.
01:32To this end, government will be moving to resolve long-standing land tenure
01:38and ownership issues plaguing farmers.
01:40Because we recognize that some people are farming on the grandfather land,
01:44but the grandfather passed away.
01:46The lease hasn't been transferred to your father or to the grandchild.
01:50But the family would have been cultivating these lands for 45, 65 years,
01:55but they don't have the title or the paperwork.
01:57We have to find ways of working around that.
02:00So what we are looking at is we are looking at, as we go forward,
02:04to do a registration based on production,
02:07that farmers who are producing would be entitled to become registered
02:12with the Ministry of Agriculture.
02:14Do I have your support on that?
02:17Emphasis is also being placed on securing agroprocessing deals for farmers.
02:22We have held meetings with one agroprocessor who is interested in purchasing sweet potato.
02:31Sweet potato to manufacture sweet potato fries so that we can introduce a little healthier fries.
02:39On the infrastructure side, the ministry has ruled out a national drainage plan,
02:44which the minister says is already bearing fruit.
02:47And by the time, three weeks after the second yellow alert came,
02:51we had completed the work in Aranguers.
02:54And even though all the farmers in Aranguers South were flooded out
02:58in the first yellow alert in Maymont,
03:01when the second one came, not one farmer got flooded out in Aranguers.
03:08And that was done with the excavator and the baco from within the Ministry of Agriculture.
03:15Not even a single contractor was called out to help us.
03:17The minister was speaking at a consultation with farmers based in Napa, Remo.
03:23Renessa Cutting, TV6 News.
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