There’s a lot of talk about “food security” concerns driving strategies in the agricultural sector worldwide. We’ve been told that the world’s running out of land and water, so, with increasing population – now EIGHT BILLION AND COUNTING!! – prices in the sector can go nowhere but up!! Sounds good for us that we have all this land and water, no?? NO!! Just listen to our rice farmers – now our biggest agri block with the downsizing of sugar. Once again, they’re up in arms complaining that the price – @ $4000/bag for paddy – is still too low.
They’ve shown that when they total up their inputs – ploughing, harvesting, fertilizers, pesticides, seed paddy, labour, water user fees, fuel etc…they consistently end up behind the eight ball!! And your Eyewitness hasn’t even mentioned the year-round rainfall in which our weather pattern has been stuck!! Rice needs water, but at specific times!! Other times, the field has to be dry!! Like at harvesting time, when the combine can’t be pulling out the water-and-mud-logged rice plants with the paddy grains!! We should note that, of recent, yields have plummeted from 50 to 40 bags per acre!
Now, this is bad news for both the farmers and the Govt!! How so for the latter?? Well, it had been announced that we were shooting to up our rice exports from 600,000 tons annually to 1,000,000 tons!! But at the present prices, farmers can’t even MAINTAIN production, much less increase it!! So, what to do?? Well, luckily the Government hasn’t thrown up its hands and said, “This is a free market…and the market will set prices”. Well, in theory, that’s true, but as we know, the US and the EU have always subsidised their farmers because of the strategic nature of food supplies.
So, if we want to play with the big boys in the rice market, we gotta play by the rules presently made by those big boys. Can’t be “do as we say and not as we do”!! Right now, rice world market prices are in a slump, occasioned by large production surpluses by India – the largest exporter of the commodity!! Last year, the WTO reminded India that their subsidies to rice exceeded the allowable 10%!! An idea of what subsiders are offered can be gleaned from the US menu for rice farmers – “federal crop insurance, government-set price supports, marketing loans, and trade promotion programs” – plus US$250 million doled out directly in 2022!!
The bottom line is that, if we are to avoid the Dutch disease, we gotta diversify – and agriculture is supposed to be the area where we have a comparative advantage.
If we can’t make it there, we can’t make it anywhere!!
…with oil
Now that we got oil, we’re getting friends all over the place!! Eric Williams famously pointed out that “oil don’t spoil”…but Trinidad’s experience has shown that it does run out!! And the effects are just like if it spoiled – no money coming into the Treasury!! Well, so what’s the lesson?? Simply that we gotta get as high a price as we can, so we can make as much money as we can while the oil’s flowing!!
With Exxon having us over a barrel (of oil??) with that contract the PNC’s Raphael Trotman signed, we gotta do the best on prices with what we have: which is the 14.5% of cost oil. What we also need is to be protected from the vagaries of market prices – which isn’t set by supply and demand, as most folks think – but by SPECULATORS, who gamble on where they THINK supply’s gonna meet demand!! Hence the need for purchasers who need real – and not speculative – oil!!
Enter India, courtesy of the efforts of VP Jagdeo!!
…in agro-processing
With most money made on money, small countries like ours gotta add as much value to our agri products as we can before exporting them. Enter agro-processing, which the Government’s pushing.
But we gotta go beyond the mom-and-pop operations!!
