The Trinidad farmers association remains in the dark about the contours of a Memorandum of Under-standing (MoU) which would see the development of agricultural lands here and it argues that the twin-island republic has ample land for any farming initiative contemplated.
“Our farming communities have been looking to the government to rectify expired leases for the past 18 years in Trinidad… we have been looking to the government to develop the land here in Trinidad, charity begins at home. Now they said that to reduce the food import bill we go to Guyana… we can reduce that by farming here,” Shiraz Khan, President of the Trinidad and Tobago Farmers Association told Stabroek News from Port-of-Spain in a recent phone interview.
He said that the recently signed MoU between Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago that would see 10,000 acres of land being developed here by Trinidadian farmers would only be worthwhile if both nations looked toward commodity-based farming.
“If we are going to Guyana, we should look at commodities. They [Guy-ana] import a lot of corn, why not grow corn and satisfy both the Guyana and Trinidadian markets. That has to be the way to do this,” Khan stated.
“We want to reduce the food import bill so we can’t go to Guyana and grow food, because it is still a Guyanese product, unless we focus on commodity-based farming then both countries aren’t thinking,” he added.
Khan noted that since T&T Minister of Finance Larry Howai made it known that Trinidadian investors would be enjoying the same incentives as Guyanese farmers under the MoU, nothing more has been said in relation to what will be procedure.
“None of us know what they are going to plant. None of us know what this deal is about, Guyanese and Trinidad farmers, none of us know,” he said.
“So much land [in Trinidad] hasn’t been exploited… the opposition in parliament asked them [the government] what they are going to be planting [in Guyana] and they didn’t say… they haven’t given us access roads into the farming communities up to now some 18 years, some 50 years and we are going to Guyana now,” he further complained.
Khan said that he was not against the deal, which could grow to as much as 100,000 acres, but added that farmers from both nations had to be further included. He said that “the red bean is high in protein, it is mutually beneficial, no, not just us and you but the region…grow the red bean on a commercial basis rather than import the soybean from the (United) States.” He stated that governments from both nations are seemingly just signing MoUs and not thinking ahead about what would satisfy the Carib-bean region.
Khan told Stabroek News that land leasing works out to roughly TT$1,000 per acre (G$31,600) in Trinidad, while Trinidadian farmers currently in Guyana have reported that leasing works out to roughly TT$6 or G$200 per acre. He said that the incentive was to go to Guyana and grow but that only large-scale farmers would have the opportunity and while those who could spend to lease lands would benefit from Guyana’s cheap rates, local farmers who are not operating on a commercial scale are burdened with high costs.
Khan noted that the MOU has not been expanded on and as a result neither nation is aware of what the details of the deal will be. “Are they going to focus on corn? Guyana has this land and it can be developed for mechanisation and we grow corn. We are going to Guyana to grow what we can grow here? How is that going to benefit all of us? We need to look at what we all import regionally and then make a plan,” he said.
Two months have passed since Minister of Agriculture Dr Leslie Ramsammy first announc-ed that Trinidadian farmers would be benefiting from the use of 10,000 acres in Guyana. He had signalled that the land might be in the Mahaica-Berbice area. Ramsammy did not, however, say that the land was positively going to be in that area and stated that a Trinidadian team had only visited that area last year when the MoU was in the works. He had stated that previously teams had visited and seemed interested in aquaculture, coconuts and rice.
Ramsammy had stated that the initiative was to encourage Caricom nations with little land mass to look to Guyana for fertile farming grounds. He had previously stated that while it would be Trinidadian farmers utilising the land, the products would still be Guyanese. He also did not expand how the Caricom common market feature would work in relation to the joint venture, which has many still confused as to how the deal will actually work.
He had stated previously “it is not that the Trinidadian government will come and utilise that land. The Trinidadian government is intending to mobilise Trinidadian farmers who will work along with Guyanese to develop food that Trinidad presently imports.”
Ramsammy added that “I am not taking away land from Guyana’s rice farmers or for Guyana’s farmers to give to Trinidad. When we gave the Barbadians we gave them land [in the Rupununi] that no one was using and no one wanted to use.”
He had stated that the initiative would be beneficial for all involved and that Guyanese could expect job opportunities while wealth generation would occur for both Guyanese and Trinidadian investors who would be developing and growing on the land.
The Trinidad government has also disbursed over TT$150 million through the Agriculture Development Bank with over 1400 loans while developing over 10,000 acres domestically in small and large scale farms. While the government has invested, the TTFA insisted that leases in farming communities have been allowed to lapse due to a fall in production which the TTFA says was inadvertent because government was lackadaisical in developing infrastructure and farming communities.
