Urgent need for agriculture

THE EDITOR: I shall be grateful if you can publish this letter “Agriculture today is in a parlous depression” and has brought about the terrific unemployment situation in the country. Many people are living without any means of livelihood and to add insult to injury the cost of living has skyrocketed; all government utilities have increased. Statistics show that almost 40 percent of our people are poverty stricken and are eking out an existence; and that too in a country labelled as the richest in the Caribbean, a gem of the British Empire, extremely beautiful, the soil rich and fertile, the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture is placed here.

Tom Adams, Prime Minister of Barbados once said “If he had the money of Trinidad he would pave the streets of his country with gold.” What has gone wrong? While there are many causes, in my humble opinion, I put the blame squarely on the gentlemen merchants, the elite businessmen. They have moved away from the principle of their predecessors who invested heavily in agriculture, every nook and corner had estates and people found employment.

They were the forerunners of the Pitch Lake, the train, the ferry and petroleum. Gentlemen merchants, the country needs your help. The Dansteel firm, has set the pace, they employ over a thousand people; in Guyana the Booker Brothers, the giant firm has helped the Co-operative of Guyana. “Guyana is Booker Brothers” and “Booker Brothers is Guyana.”  The NAR was on the right track, they tried to bring back the abandoned estates to fruition. The last war has fully illustrated its value. The German submarine torpedoed all ships. The people tickled the soil with the hoe and it laughed with a harvest. There was food galore.

SAMUEL DOODNATH
ex Principal, Penal