By Raffique Shah
October 01, 2024

Some day last week, several of my one-time associates and long-time friends managed to breach the hurdles TSTT has implanted on my ancient landline to isolate me from what passes for civilisation today. They called to ask if I heard Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley crowing like a “fowl-cock” when he rolled out a new programme his Government was about to embark on, one tag-line proclaiming: “Making agriculture sexy!”

I had listened to the PM and he was indeed crowing as was suggested, but he also wore a sly grin when he applied the “sexy” marketing term to the Government’s agro-food programme, I thought, as I watched recipients of what appeared to be grants or documents showing beneficiaries of the programme handed over to scores of eager-looking, mostly young persons who had graduated from Government’s new thrust in food production.

I had heard this speech before. The contents sounded very familiar. Then I remembered, it was way back in Patrick Manning’s last term in office, probably 2007. Back then, high-powered committees led by professionals such as Dr Lenny Saith worked over a period of years and finally got projects in the upstream and downstream into motion. I don’t know if Dr Rowley remembers those projects. They included the establishment of Trinidad’s Agribusiness Association (TTABA) which would eventually get on the road, and at the time seemed like a dream come true for the farming community.

By the time Mr Manning demitted office, or rather lost power to a UNC-led coalition government, agribusiness had taken on a life of its own. All over the country people were planting and reaping crops such as cassava, hot peppers, sweet potatoes, water melons, pumpkins, paw-paw, to name a few.

TTABA had negotiated favourable and admittedly subsidised prices with farmers who had been contracted by the association to grow and supply root crops. The cassava and sweet potatoes were either cleaned and packaged or they were turned into healthier versions of French fries and sold through franchises. It had gone so far that KFC had agreed to carry the fries as a part of their menu. Equipment was bought and processing began. Meanwhile, on another front, Trinidad hot peppers, which are notoriously hot and flavourful, with the scorpion brand out front, were under consideration and being tested for their suitability in being used for pepper sprays, a crime-fighting device. The capsaicin in peppers that causes it to “burn” is what is used in pharmaceuticals to promote health and well-being.

This was all done before the Kamla Persad-Bissessar-led UNC coalition came to power in 2010. Meanwhile, I recall the then president of the Agricultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago, Ms Dhanoo Sookoo, an active farmer, was exporting watermelons to Barbados and other Caribbean tourist islands. Cucumbers and pumpkins also found favour with our Caribbean neighbours. The TTABA had done extensive trials and other tests to determine what produce were most suitable to our soil conditions to give optimum returns. TTABA had also established a huge warehouse-type building in which machinery that would process the produce that would make them market ready, were all sitting in the warehouse.

TTABA was an autonomous body that government had agreed to support because of its success rate, with farmers benefiting the most from their programmes. Understandably, there were conflicts among TTABA’s management, the government ministries, and other affiliated institutions. By the time the coalition came into power, TTABA was seen as a PNM creature that had to be dismantled. And so what was five years earlier a most promising venture in the agro sector collapsed and died. Some farmers who had established their own line of marketing, survived. In the name of hunting down corruption, officials from the new government destroyed all the positive and progressive work done by the organisation.

Fast forward to today and Dr Rowley’s “sexy” agriculture; I wonder if those eager faces I saw will remain smiling should the PNM lose the upcoming election. The experiences we have had so far tell us that when one government goes out of power, the incoming regime must undo everything their predecessor did. This modus operandi is what saw the Brian Lara Cricket Academy hung up for years gathering moss and rust before it became what it is today, where everybody and their brother attend cricket, fetes and sundry events.

I should tell PM Rowley that he is no pioneer in promoting “sexy” farming. Back when I was a teenager there was a pretty girl in Freeport who married into an agro-family and could be seen on any good day driving their tractor into the farms and on the roads. There was some competition for female farmers that “Theo”, what we called her, won. Perhaps it was women like Theo, who was as sexy as it gets in farming, who encouraged the likes of Dhanoo and others to enter that field. Who knows?