Caroni — a world of opportunities

THE EDITOR: The point at which Caroni (1975) Ltd has reached indicates that in the near future there will be a significant shift in two of the main resources in any nation — labour and land, from a traditional base to occupations yet undetermined.

So large is this prospective movement that great care must be taken to ensure the proper re-engagement of these resources in a manner that would best benefit the nation; it is a duty of the state to ensure thus, and already it should have in motion an efficient machinery to ensure that its resources are properly occupied after the proposed changes in Caroni Ltd. The changes have to be integrated into a national framework, and in this casual comment to the editor, I will seek to point out a few of the realities facing the Caroni labourer as sugar cultivation is phased out. The worker who will seek to obtain lands for agricultural purposes faces a somewhat grim prospect as an individual, as he will have to start from a single plant, literally; the best way for workers is to go the way of co-operatives.

Assuming a group of a hundred workers wish to enter cattle rearing. After getting together, they lay out their plans to the technocrats in the Ministry of Agriculture, and it is decided that an area of seven hundred acres, to eventually carry a thousand head of cattle will be optimum for the first five year period. The group purchases one hundred head of cattle (may include buffalo and buffalypso) of which 90 are breeding females. Of the acreage, two hundred acres are planted with para grass, one hundred acres in sugar cane, for use as feed, one hundred acres in cattle corn, for feed, and the rest in pasture, pens, etc.

In the first year, assume 75 female animals give birth, and 65 survive, of which 30 are females, which will be breedable in two years. The same general result holds for the second year, and in the third, add the new lot of females. If the project is carried out efficiently, which means untold hard work and few, if any, holidays, in five years the enterprise will be quite valuable. As sideline activity, occupations such as aquaculture and vegetable cultivation would be very profitable.

The same sort of project could be done with respect to goat, pig, and other types of livestock farming. The government will have to assist by placing higher taxes on imported meats, and all the fresh milk produced will be compulsorily purchased by the school feeding programme. It should be the pressing objective, that the only item on the school feeding programme that is imported, will be bread. All else should be local produce. The result is a net injection of almost 100 million each year into the agricultural sector, and a guaranteed market for produce. Immense back-up technical services will have to be provided by the Ministry of Agriculture, including introduction of disease-resistant strains of crops, genetically altered seeds for crops used as feedstock. One very promising enterprise in the field of aquaculture is the rearing of Malaysian prawn, and such a project was actually begun some years ago in Caroni, but failed because of laziness, I believe. The research documents for that project should be dug up and circulated to interested people.

The State should retain the marginal lands of Caroni (1975) Ltd  and plant teak, providing employment and increasing the value of the resource. Also, taking advantage of its position near the Caroni swamp, and the port where cruise ships dock, the rice lands of Caroni should be converted to a large version of the Pointe-a-Pierre Wildfowl Trust. In a few years, it should be a never-miss for cruise ships in the Caribbean. As a beginning, there should be a complete ban on shooting of wildfowl.

SURENDRA SAKAL
Port-of-Spain