Growing more agri-business

Minister of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries, Clarence Rambharat, hinted at this on Wednesday, saying he believes the business of planting and harvesting of crops belongs in private sector hands.

The minister revealed that he told the National Agricultural Marketing and Development Corporation (Namdevco) to advertise for private sector participation in its new and incomplete packing houses, presumably ones under construction.

Suggesting that “government business is bad business and it will always be so,” the minister said, “I have no intention to put more taxpayers’ money into those packing houses.” Rambharat made these comments while addressing a Hot Pepper Field Tour organised by the Agricultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago at the farm of Nawaz Karim in Maloney. Rambharat believes the business of planting and harvesting crops belongs in private sector hands.

Namdevco officials would not say how many “new and incomplete” packing houses the company has, saying they had to confirm the information with the corporation’s acting chief executive officer, Ayoub Mohammed, who was in a meeting.

However, newspaper reports suggest there are about five packing houses owned and operated by Namdevco. Ten million dollars has been provided as an initial allocation to the corporation in the 2009-2010 budget to establish five packing houses and in 2013, Cabinet approved a further $52 million to finance the building of packing houses in Rio Claro/Tabaquite; Sangre Grande; Chaguanas/Couva and Tableland/Barrackpore, and to set up a temporary facility at the port of Port-of-Spain.

Rambharat said he was convinced the packing house at Woodford Lodge should not be used by Namdevco but should be put into the hands of the private sector.

“And this matter of packing, storage, freezing and so on is a private sector initiative to be supported by the government using what we have and that is the physical asset and let Namdevco perform the other functions that the law asks them to perform.” In fact, the minister said he did not believe the wholesale markets at Macoya and Debe should be operated by the government at all “and if it has to be, that parts of it should be made available to the private sector for the work of the farmers to be done.” He said everyone recognises that government business would always be bad business and this is why he preferred to have farmers and farmers’ associations running their own affairs and doing what was necessary for the farmers to be competitive.

The minister’s declaration represents a sharp change in direction from that of the previous administration which established the packing houses to assist farmers in exporting high quality products and encouraged them to see the facilities as an opportunity to move up from being food producers and become entrepreneurs, as former minister of food production Devant Maharaj once put it.

During a speech at the sod-turning for the start of construction of the packing house at the former Tanteak site at Brickfield, Tabaquite, during his tenure, Maharaj said the facility would provide employment opportunities through linkages in agro-processing and create further vertical linkages with restaurants and fast food outlets when the packed produce is marketed.

“The initiative of this packing house will provide long overdue support and a modern facility for the farmers in their respective areas.

Farmers will be encouraged to not only simply be farmers but to become agro-entrepreneurs,” Maharaj said.

The Brickfield packing house, which was to provide 300 square metres of storage space, was intended to benefit farmers from Tabaquite; Brasso; Caratal; Brothers’ Road and Rio Claro. Namdevco operates another packing house on seven acres of land at the Caroni North Bank Road, Piarco. Just two kilometres from the Piarco International Airport.

The corporation said the Piarco facility was intended “to provide a one stop destination for fresh produce packers and exporters so that they can store their fresh fruits and vegetables as well as meat and fish, in transit to foreign markets.” The Piarco packing house boasts four refrigeration rooms, three chiller rooms, one freezer room and storage area for over 100 pallets of produce. Users are charged a fee for use of the facilities.