Budget 3

And so the annual exercise was completed yesterday with the presentation of the National Budget 2018 by the Minister of Finance.
The reason I say completed is because once the Budget is read/presented then the submissions by the Opposition are purely political and the submissions by other members of the Government are purely about 'how great thou art'.
In this wonderful land we will now waste four (4) weeks of precious Parliamentary time debating something that is already a done deal.

Agriculture:

T&T imports in excess of $800,000,000.00 US of food every year. We cannot even start to feed ourselves.
We grow no wheat so no flour so no bread and roti, we have no large scale dairy herds so no milk, butter nor cheese, we sold the entire breeding stock of bufalypso so no real supply of meat. Chicken, duck, lamb, goat all underproduced. Some rice, some green vegetables. Fish is available but very limited.
Basically if you go to a supermarket with the intention of buying only foods that are actually produced and processed in T&T I am pretty sure maybe 30% of your basket will be 100% home grown. I am not speaking about items that require the importation of the raw material and then simply packaged or minimal processing to be called 'local'.

The Minister of Finance went on for nearly 3 hrs talking about 'changing the paradigm'. Royalties for oil, new taxes for every sector, soon new utility costs, fuel, corporation tax, banking tax, tax on tax.

If we are able to feed ourselves, at least by more than 75% of our food intake, then we are now getting serious about 'the new paradigm'.
How do we do this, not easy, but we do everything possible to get our farmers back on the land not only growing food but involved in processing and packaging where we now have marketable home grown food.
There was once a Minister of Agriculture who referred to himself as "the pumpkin and bhagi Minister'. That is where we as a country have agriculture and nothing has changed over decades.

A new mindset is required. The Minister yesterday in his 3 hrs statement ended by saying that Agriculture would be receiving $500,000,000.00 TT for its funding for the 2018 fiscal year. This represents less than 1% of the total allocation of $53.0BN. It gets worst, the Ministry of Agriculture's allocation was cut by $200.0M from last years budget.
If that does not stick in your craw the 2018 allocation is less than 10% of the total food import bill.

What absolute madness is this?

This is what others in the world do. The following text has been taken from various sources dealing with agricultural subsidies:

An agricultural subsidy is a governmental subsidy paid to farmers and agribusinesses to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities.


Farmers in the world’s top 21 food-producing countries, responsible for nearly 80 percent of global agricultural markets, received about $486 billion in public support in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available. Further, nearly all of these were industrialized countries, with two-thirds constituting the membership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a grouping of rich countries that includes the United States and which put out the data.

LIST OF PROS OF AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES

1. Reduce Agricultural Imports
Farming is a tedious and inconvenient occupation, and not many people like to work on a farm. But the population is growing and their need for food is growing as well. If a country such as the United States lack farm products (because there are no more farmers or farms no longer provide sufficient food supply), it needs to import agricultural products from somewhere else. Imported products are often more expensive than locally produced ones. By providing agricultural subsidies, more people are encouraged to farm, which leads to more locally grown agricultural produce and less imports.

2. Stabilize Agricultural Infrastructure
Any financial aid to farmers helps in the purchase or funding of farming equipment and technology, as well as in developing infrastructure required to facilitate the transport of agricultural produce from farm to market (end user). Some farmers cannot afford the purchase or upkeep of farm infrastructure especially those that need hefty capitalization.

3. Provide Steady Income to Farmers
Regardless of the economy, farmers are assured of steady income through the help of agricultural subsidies. Farmers often experience losses over natural and manmade disasters such as drought, hurricane, and wildfire. Some farmers do not yield enough to realize a profit because they lack the funds for the farm’s upkeep. But with agricultural subsidies, farmers no longer have to worry about poor harvest or low marketability.

4. Manage Food Supply
The more farmers there are, and the more successful farms there are, the greater the harvest, and the higher the food supply. A country that produces plenty of agricultural products often do not have problems with food supply, but is in fact, a huge exporter of such products to countries that lack food supply. It is easier to manage a resource when there is plenty of it, than when there is lack.

LIST OF CONS OF AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES

1. Need Government Intervention
Agricultural subsidies directly affect the price and supply of commodities, which the government uses as part of its manipulative tactic. Without subsidies, prices and supply go on its natural course – something naturally predicted by the market fluctuations.

2. Lack of Product Diversity
Not all kinds of crops or products are eligible for subsidy. Farmers who badly need subsides may be forced to grow crops dictated in the program. This affects the variety or diversity of agricultural products in the market, which ultimately defeats the purpose of lowering agricultural imports because then products that are not produced locally will have to be sourced elsewhere.

3. Discriminate Other Farmers 
Agricultural subsidies discriminate farmers that specialize on crops or agricultural products that are not eligible for subsidy. Those that grow eligible crops get funding have higher chance of producing good harvest, enjoying higher profits, and living comfortably – those that do not have higher chances of failure.

4. May Hurt the Environment
Alternating crops and diversification is a traditional method of sustainable farming. But with agricultural subsidies, the continuous planting of similar or the same crop for prolonged period could eventually hurt the environment. In addition, the use of certain chemicals to ensure good harvest spells disaster environment wise.

The world is not a perfect place but we in Trinidad and Tobago have to fend for ourselves first. Our Government must understand the issue of food security and cannot for one minute simply tax the BMW X5's and think for one moment that is the answer to our predicament.

There are 50,000 acres of abandoned Caroni lands, thousands of acres of private land and thousands of acres of State land. Minister of Finance figure it out!

Tomorrow we continue our conversation.