By RUSHTON PARAY, MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FOR MAYARO
Trinidad and Tobago, which has suffered from the vagaries of recent food supply issues, should take careful note of the suspension of the wartime grain deal between Russia and Ukraine.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has terminated an agreement that had permitted Ukraine to ship wheat, barley, sunflower oil, corn and other food items to various parts of the world, especially developing countries.
Since the accord was brokered by the United Nations last August, Ukraine exported almost 37 million tons of food.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s vast country is one of the world’s food baskets, and its supplies have fed millions and stabilised prices, even in far-off places.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative helped to forestall hunger in several lands.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation and other international agencies anticipate the prices of certain food items – such as cereal – climbing by as much as 20 per cent with the cancellation of the deal.
Before the agreement was negotiated, world prices of several food staples soared as a result of demand outstripping supplies.
Like other countries, Trinidad and Tobago felt the impact in our pockets, with food inflation at the highest levels in recent years, even as wages stood standstill.
T&T had earlier buckled under international food chain supply issues caused by the Covid-19 lockdown.
Shipments to this country at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea took much longer than usual.
The double whammy has led to a growing food importation bill – now close to $6 billion a year – at a time of tight foreign exchange availability, partly as a result of the flight of business investors.
In addition, climate change is having a crippling impact on global food production.
Monsoon floods have led India to ban exports of non-basmati rice in order to properly feed its people.
The cutback in shipments is already impacting markets around the world, with price hikes, shortages and panic-buying.
The United States imports 90 per cent of its rice from South Asia.
In all of this, there is the Caricom Food Initiative, through which regional leaders have vowed to reduce the collective food import bill by 25 per cent by 2025.
Caricom Secretary-General Dr. Carla Barnett has joined others in pressing the urgency of ensuring “our food and nutrition security,” by “implementing an agri-food systems strategy to reduce reliance on extra-regional imports…”
The ambitious Caricom plan is led by President Dr. Irfaan Ali, President of Guyana, where there have been increased productions in fish, coconut, root crops and other items.
Other countries are reporting greater yields of various items, including dairy, meat, cocoa, root crops, poultry, soya, and eggs.
If Trinidad and Tobago has contributed to filling the regional food basket, it remains a top-level secret.
In fact, production indexes reveal lower harvests in recent years, with the agricultural sector making a negligible contribution to gross domestic product.
The administration of Dr. Keith Rowley has not shown an appetite for food sufficiency and in 2018, the Prime Minister infamously said that “we have no land space to talk about to get in agriculture, to get economies of scale.”
Clearly, Dr. Rowley has ignored the thousands of available and arable acres of former Caroni (1975), some of which have been disbursed to political cronies for housing and commerce.
The Prime Minister also said: “Most people in this country have gone past peasant agriculture and would have nothing to do with it.”
That statement is another testament to our national leader’s ignorance about the thousands of people who are ploughing the land in order to feed their families, in some cases, to pay their bills.
It also reveals a lack of knowledge about the prevalence of modern farming methods.
The uncertainties of war and the alarming impact of climate change should make Trinidad and Tobago till the soil like never before and strive toward food security.
“Plant the land,” as calypsonian Ras Shorty1 once urged.
