The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) may still be imprisoned in a condition of inertia in the matter of embracing a collective initiative to shore up its food security and reduce its mammoth food security bill, but as has become customary in the region, individual countries are sometimes inclined to make gestures which customarily fall short of going ‘the whole nine yards’ in terms of becoming a building block on which the edifice of a food-secure Caribbean will stand.
Trinidad and Tobago is one of those countries in the region that ‘thinks big’ in terms of conceptualising projects in its agricultural sector that can help lay the foundation of Caribbean food security. Last week, another such gesture materialised in the form of a disclosure from the country’s Minister of Agriculture, Clarence Rambharat, that the country’s private sector had already pumped TT$200 million into the local agricultural sector and in addition to that financial impetus, there were plans afoot to increase the application of technology not just to boost production in the sector but also to expand the range of agricultural produce cultivated in the country.