Montano promises Caroni lands for food

Some 68,000 acres once owned by the now- defunct Caroni Limited will soon be under food production. Legal Affairs Minister, Senator Danny Montano, made the observation at the World Food Day exhibition at Gulf City Mall, La Romaine yesterday. Montano, who had earlier visited a number of exhibition booths depicting a variety of local food crops and cuisine, said despite the “abundance of petro-dollars,” urgent measures were needed to reduce the nation’s food import bill.

“It is imperative that we begin to feed ourselves. The fact that we have petro-dollars does not mean that we should continue to import at the rate that we are importing,” he said, adding the nation’s food import bill had skyrocketed to a whopping TT$ 1.9 billion, an increase of some 46 percent from 1995’s figure of $1.3 billion. He observed Government had placed a high priority on the nation’s ability to feed itself saying the closure of the former sugar manufacturing company had brought an opportunity for the nation to feed itself.  

“Caroni has about 76,000 acres of arable land, which was previously producing a product (which) while you could eat it, in a sense, you couldn’t make a meal out of it,” he said. Montano added: “We have now freed up 68,000 acres for the production of food. And within the next few months, beginning within the next few weeks, you will begin to see the allocations of lands, tracts of land being made to the Caroni farmers.” He observed that caterers in the school feeding programme had already begun to include local foods on their menus.