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  • 3 months ago
As the country approaches Independence Day, Agriculture Minister Ravi Ratiram says, the country could never be independent unless and until it achieves food sustainability. Rynessa Cutting has more.
Transcript
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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