Lip-service mainly for eating local

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Practical obstacles in the way of growing more and consuming more local produce have been elaborately acknowledged by Food Production Minister Devant Maharaj. And the ministry's solution: a year-long advertising campaign to persuade citizens to eat local. Such a campaign must necessarily be based on assumptions that ordinary people do not know what they like to eat and are incapable of calculating what their budgets can afford. Yet, even if this PR strategy bears fruit, would local production be able to meet desired demand? Mr Maharaj is hardly the first minister to preach the gospel of food security, but the practice shows a dismal record in implementing measures to achieve that end. Although Caroni (1975) Ltd was shut down in 2003, partly on the premise the sugarcane acreage could be better utilised for more diverse food production by the former cane-cutters, it wasn't until 2005 that the government even published the names of the 7,247 ex-workers who had applied for agricultural land. In those two years, it became apparent that the shutdown of the company had been done hastily, with no real plan to exploit the now fallow lands. Not even an access road or irrigation system was built for the fledgling farmers who were supposed to make the land productive again.