T&T is seeing a resurgence of the agricultural sector says Food Production Minister Devant Maharaj. However, while the food importation bill is going down in terms of quantity, prices are increasing on the international market. Senator Maharaj is contending that the country has seen five successive quarterly growth in food production. The minister is adamant that reporters should declare their political affiliation.
Q: Mr Minister, weren’t you attacking the media when you recently called for reporters to declare their political affiliations, and doesn’t that run contrary to the expected norm of the industry?
A: (Seated and shaking his legs in the foyer of the Parliament on Tuesday afternoon) First of all, I disagree with your premise that I attacked the media. What I did was support the position of Independent Senator Vieira that people in the media with political alliances, or media houses with political agendas, should be honest and be frank with the population and declare their hand. It is clear, for example, that you have a person like (writer named) writing a weekly column...
I don’t want you to attack any individual, you know...
No. I am not attacking anybody. I am giving you an example (laughs).
I know that, but…
(Interrupting the question) I am giving you an example, but don’t cut my flow, man. You have at the bottom of his column his professional occupation, giving no impression that he has any political persuasion. But when you know the political genealogy of the individual, you would see…
Well, I don’t know his political genealogy and I am...
(Interrupting) Well I am telling you, but when you look at the column, it has a political slant.
As a reporter we are advised not to identify with any political party and then the writer is a columnist—so he is free to express his opinion, right?
Well, what about (naming a TV reporter) who on Facebook has pictures of himself all over the place...he is a reporter. Now, how do you compare the likes of those with...let us say, like (naming another columnist)...when you watch at him, you don’t know if he is...
But, as I said, he is a columnist, isn’t he?
I do know, but that writer is also a columnist...that is why I give the analogy of him…but when you give the illusion that you...
Wait. When we get back to the original question...
(A third interruption.) How you drifting away from my answer so? I get a feeling that I am being slighted in this interview.
Senator Maharaj, I know that we writers try not to become political animals…
Many of you have failed.
(A flat retort)
Mr Minister, let’s now turn to your portfolio. We are still seeing on the food shelves in the supermarkets a lot of imported food items. How does that impact on your ministry’s plans to reduce the food import bill?
Well, it is not directly, in my respectful view, because people’s tastes cannot be legislated for, it is an acquired taste. I hear what you are saying...
Yes, but isn’t…?
I hear what you are saying, but let me finish, right? So after a decade of being cultivated on a diet which is external to T&T—because the diet that we enjoy now is not what your great-grandmother had as a staple, and is not to be found on the dining table today—a diet today of hamburger, fries, and all these fast food restaurants has been cultivated...But we are not a “Burnhamesque” kind of country where we ban this and ban that in order to promote local (food).
But hasn’t there been a move over the years to grow more food locally?
Yes, and it is happening. We have had five consecutive quarters of growth in the agricultural sector.
Can you give us a breakdown in terms of figures?
I said it in the Senate, you can pull it from Hansard (the verbatim reports of parliamentary proceedings), right? And for the first time in Trinidad, the sector has seen a re-energisation, if you will. We are moving people into local foods, and we are promoting it in different ways.
For example?
In recent years, there has been new focus on healthy lifestyles, and we are getting away from the chemicals and pesticides and some of the lifestyle diseases that Minister Fuad Khan has been speaking about.
One of your predecessors told me about 20 years ago, that the food import bill at that time stood at one billion dollars. What has been done to reduce this astronomical figure?
We have reduced it between three to four per cent. The last figure I got from the Ministry of Trade, I do not have at the top of my head...We are seeing that while the amount has been going down in terms of quantity, the price has been going up because of the price increases on the international market. For example, recently I have been advised by my technocrats that there has been some sort of restriction on milk exportation and cheese from China, because of particular things which have affected global prices.
Senator Maharaj, in spite of the incentives that governments including the PP have offered to farmers over the years, you still hear people like Shiraz Khan complaining about the lack of more effective assistance from the Government. Mr Khan is a member of the Movement for Social Justice, he is a person that the ADB has some issues with. What he says, I take with a shovel of salt, because he has a political and financial agenda to grind.
I am working with a group which he broke away from...Another group I am working with is the Sheep and Goat Society, led by John Borely, which is not in protest with this ministry.
Apart from involving yourself in some controversial issues, what are some of the positives being undertaken by your ministry?
Ok. I thought you were not going to get there. (Smiles) OK. We have re-launched the Cedros Breeding Unit down in Chatham, we are also looking at the Chatham Dairy Unit, both of which have been abandoned by the PNM. We have a similar exercise in Poole in Rio Caro. Why you cut me off so? (laughs).
I do not have enough space. You seem to be having some problems with the Agricultural Society. What is happening down there?
There is no Agricultural Society, and I have three reports before me: one from the person who recently conducted the society’s recent election, saying that the election lacked transparency, it was undemocratic, essentially fraudulent because of a number of inconsistencies...
I think I read somewhere it was stated you had some kind of interest in...
You looking like you want to interview yourself, you know? Before I finish one question you asking me another. Fellas like you should hang up all yuh guns (laughs). A next report from the senior legal officer from this ministry saying the same thing. The secretary of the board saying the same thing and, in fact, the election was declared null and void... However, it was virtually hijacked.
Finally Mr Minister, what incentives are the ministry offering young people to encourage them to get into food production? Because as you may know, farming was once considered a kind of demeaning job.
Well, we have a number of young people entering the sector, so it is happening and youths are seeing farming now as a viable alternative, and these are people who may not have come from people who are farmers. As you know we have retooled the Yappa, the Caroni Green Initiative whereby people who got land from Caroni, we have now allowed those who do not have an interest in farming to rent out their lands to farmers.