Minister: Namdevco date ‘unreliable’

In agriculture, data is more important than any other piece of information for production planning, he added, saying decisions cannot be made by, “cut and paste and guess.” Production data provided by the Central Bank, which dedicates “three lines” to agriculture in its quarterly bulletin, he said, “is derived from a single physical market in the country, Namdevco market in Macoya.” Rambharat made these claims yesterday as he delivered the main address at the opening of a five-day regional roundtable on the World Programme for the Centre of Agriculture 2020 at the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel, Invader’s Bay.

The forum was sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

On the issue of Namdevco’s data collection, Rambharat said agricultural economist Omardath Maharaj has been assigned to review this data and present a report by the end of June.

“That will be the basis on which I determine the next step in terms of data collection in agriculture and fisheries in Trinidad and Tobago,” Rambharat said. What really matters, he said, is the numbers which would assist the ministry in making long-term investments in agriculture.

Not a lot of people get excited with data and statistics, he opined.

Across the Caribbean, Rambharat said, when it comes to farmers, fisherfolk and people involved in the production of food, the talk is only about rural access roads, cost of chemicals but very rarely do they talk or argue about lack of data and unreliability of data.

Noting that agriculture is not like the normal manufacturing process where production is not exposed to the forces of nature, Rambharat said, “It is mainly because agriculture is so different and so vulnerable to forces that is not within our control that it becomes very important that we introduce even more measures to plan production, and in particular to manage risks.” The lack of data, he said, is no different in Dominica than in TT or the other islands. “All of us face the same deficiency in the sense that agriculture is treated as an ad hoc activity, and not as an activity that relies heavily on production planning and numbers,” he said.