Trivialising the escalating food price solution
THE EDITOR: In what would appear to be a superficial afterthought, PM Manning disclosed that he found time to appoint a ministerial team to probe the "mystery" of rising food prices. The current ministerial membership of the Kangaloo Team constitutes an intentional trivialisation and cosmetic response to tackling effectively the food price problem. That issue is being prosecuted by David Abdulah whose credibility and sincerity remain suspect in the face of his unrelenting demands for inflationary wage settlements. The external factors that are impacting adversely on our ultra-dependence on a ballooning imported food price bill includes the current over-valuation of sterling/Euro, recent escalating ocean freight rates because of the China factor, doubling of farm fertiliser/fuel prices and an increasingly strong global food demand situation in which agricultural subsidies are on the wane because of WTO regulations. On the domestic setting double digit inflationary wage increase (thanks to FITUN), increasing port congestion charges (thanks to Customs and SWWTU), strong demand for food (eg school feeding), floods, URP/CEPEP largesse, Government bloated spending and Government’s disincentives to food production have all decelerated local food supply and increased prices. The agricultural worker will no longer price his labour (cost of his crops) below that of professional/services sector. TT also exports increasing volumes of food crops to TT diasporic markets in metropolitan countries at lucrative prices as was revealed in the post 9/11 era. Government’s continuing lip service to agriculture means that our food import bill is astronomical. TT is therefore susceptible to the vagaries of the international markets for food. Look at the congenital bungling that is taking place with the 77,000 acres of prime agricultural land at Caroni. Government does not have a clue on how to transform these lands to achieve food security and stable food prices. Political patronage takes precedence. The talk of Government importing cheap food in bulk is unadulterated nonsense. Will this cheap food go to party hacks? Invest the proposed food subsidies/petro-windfall in food security and production initiatives even though the producers may not support you politically and may resemble a natural UNC constituency. The composition of the team telegraphs that it is a stop-gap contingency measure. Why must Ambassador Jerry Narace replace the Supermarkets Association on the Team? Where is the Minister of Agriculture? The National Food Crop Farmers Association and the Agricultural Society (Wend Lee Yuen) must be appointed to any initiative geared to craft a long-term, sustainable agenda for achieving stability in food prices and security of supply and production. STEPHEN KANGAL Caroni
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"Trivialising the escalating food price solution"