Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It the best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Well, I said to you, we do have a special interview at this point in time. It's a gentleman. I've been trying to get on the program for quite some time to speak to us about some of the very important things related to agriculture and how we're dealing with it. And there's a feature that's going to start from this Saturday. It's described as the Brinsley Samuru Distinguished Lecture series. It's being held at the Heritage center under the patronage of the NCIC, and it's a memorial lecture series in honor of Dr. Brinsley Samarua, one of the great minds that passed away and left us with so much in his legacy. Now joining us here this morning, gentlemen, who will be speaking to us about the topic that they're going to be discussing at this edition of the distinguished lecture series, the Brinsley Samuru Distinguished Lecture series. It's taking place on Saturday 2nd March at the Bisram Gopi Auditorium, NCIC Nagar in Shagonas. It starts at 06:00 p.m. Let's welcome to our program the presenter of this edition of the series, Dr. Omarat Maharasht. Good morning to you.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Good morning, Satish. Good morning to your listeners at home and abroad. I know this topic when we speak about food and agriculture tends to get very passionate. It tends to solicit a lot of public opinion, which is good on my side, because hopefully it is a catalyst to get people to act. And in reflection on the team, the preamble that she gave the National Council for Indian Culture is dedicating, or should say rededicating their lecture series into the Brinsey Samaru distinguished Lecture series. And of course, honoring the contributions he would have made over the years. And just in a little snapshot to make the relevance as to the conversation, we are about to have to say that basically for perhaps 50 years and more profit have given of service to this country in various roles. A lot of people know him as a historian, university lecturer, and in the politics, he was an opposition senator and mp, and in the 1980s he was a government minister. Then I think I was 89 to 91 as minister of Food production and Marine exploitation. So in that vein of thought, and of course the creators or the motivation behind the series was, of course, to start as it's very important, a focus on food and agriculture for people.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Dr. Brinkley Tamaru was such an inspiration and he was such a guiding light, a wealth of information contained within his mind, he lived and experienced many of the things that he spoke about, and as a historian as well, he was clinical in addressing some of the things back then that continue to deal with us today and affect us today.
His death is a great loss, that's for sure, but his work will live on and his legacy will continue in this series is definitely a step in the right direction.
The topic is an interesting one, food security and citizens responsibility when we speak of food security, I don't know how much emphasis we place, if we place any at all, on this angle of citizens being responsible for their own food security and what can be done. It's an important discussion because the prices of commodities continue to go up. The ability of people to afford their food is going down because while everything else going up, the salaries are not going up on par with the increases that people are seeing in their living expenses. So tell us, while not wanting to take away too much from what you're going to present on Saturday, explain to me and to our listeners what is my responsibility as a citizen when it comes to food security?
[00:04:20] Speaker A: That's a very powerful segue into the topic. Satish, you made a point there about food prices outstripping the household or perhaps personal income, the rate of increase in that price level outstripping the rate of increasing your income. And by extension, you tend to feel insecure, you tend to feel uncomfortable. And perhaps for the layman, that is where the term food security rings a bell and in a wider context or the state of play in this country and other spaces. When we use the term food security, we tend to throw it around as a buzword. It's one of those buzzwords like climate change, food security is there, and all the other things that tend to get people emotional or provoke responses. But we would also want to use the opportunity that you are affording this morning to not only provoke, but of course to educate all with our listening air in terms of focusing the national conversation at this time. When we speak about food security, we are really looking at a state, if we can imagine, where all people at all times, meaning an inclusive state, would have physical, social, economic access to sufficient food, of course, to be safe and nutrition, safe and nutritious. And of course, when we use the word nutritious in that conversation, it is to meet their dietary needs and so on, to live an active, healthy and prosperous life. So we spoke about some keywords, which is of course, availability, access and affordability. These are perhaps the three dimensions that are more topical when we discuss the issue.
Clinically as you say, in terms of food security. But now in the circumstances that we live, we also speak a lot about food import or food import dependence. And therefore our food security is impacted through production and trade in our and tobago climate or within the caricom space. And therefore it means that in addition to availability, access and affordability, we're also looking at the economics, the geography, cultural acceptability and all the other social impacts that go towards feeding people in terms of combating hunger and malnutrition. So that discussion about food security is very broad in illiterate and we could go at length of it. But there are means of that. There are different groups of institutions, meaning entities that carry responsibility, all right? And we tend in a court of public opinion to, from my observation mix or blur whose responsibility things can be at times. And clearly it means that food security is a multidimensional issue. And because it is multidimensional, it means that there are many partners, not any working against each other or being perceived as based on your topics earlier this morning. It is not to cause conflict or confusion among partners, but of course there are roles and together we can achieve food security. It is not a sort of one man show responsibility. So focusing on the topic, the main stakeholders is of course public policy carried by government. They are the farmers or the food producers, including your fisher folk and marine industry. We have consumers, which is who I'd like to speak to for the few minutes we have this morning. And you already opened the door to that. Then you have the wider food manufacturing industry of NGO and civil society efforts such as the Breadfruit Trees Initiative led by Raul Bermuda, which you must have heard about at some time, and others of course, in the space green army and so on. You have international organizations that dovetail into supporting government development programs and financing, such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Program, who other multilaterals and so on. You have research institutions and academia. You have like University of the West Indies and other academic experts. You have private sector businesses having a role in agriculture. We know about retail distribution, how we as consumers access food, whether it is at the supermarket, the wet markets or the municipal markets, supporting vendors along the roadside and so on. You have financial institutions playing a role in the sector. And of course people like yourself, which is media and public opinion. And there could be probably more if we think about it more lucidly. So just to give the context that in all of those roles and responsibilities, in the little time we have, we just want to touch on citizens or consumers responsibility, which would be the focus for a few minutes.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Yeah, we've had numerous discussions on the program. We actually have an agriculture feature that runs on the station.
More than one actually speaking about food, food production, farmers, in my experience, because I speak to a lot of people, some of these farmers groups and all of that kind of thing, and other stakeholders. Everybody you talk to seems to know what needs to be done.
Everybody seems to know exactly what needs to be done, but for some strange reason, we can't get it done.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Agreed.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: What do you think is the reason why everybody have the answers, but nobody could turn them into actual solutions?
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Well, perhaps in the school curricula we need to go back there and teach something called implementation.
We have a lot of conceptual frameworks of philosophers around us. I mean, I have adopted philosophy, so I probably stand guilty.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: But from my lens, I want to say to you and your listeners this morning that a vibrant, uninclusive food production sector in this country is the largest social safety net that could be made available to the population. So if we take it from that lens, it means that if we had a successful sector, it would provide the means for the most vulnerable among us at least to meet that human or that basic right of access to safe and nutritious food. As we open the discussion with, and of course to the wider consuming public, it will mean that in the economic circumstances, people therefore need to know where their food comes from, how it is produced, and of course to respect the circumstances of the men, women, boys and girls who work to feed us. So how does that make sense? It makes sense that, yes, they make the insertion that we have so many solutions but zero implementation, or lack thereof. But I'm saying to you, for the sake of the little time we have, that I can address implementation right now, but it only to suggest, of course, that from the consumer lens, before this broadening topic all over, just to focus that these are the main things that I think consumers or citizens are concerned about right now, having looked at the national conversation, and we could go at them in detail, but I'm just laying it there. And of course, in subsequent times, and I apologize to you again that we didn't meet or cross paths sooner for different reasons. But the fact remains, if we just take one example, as you're saying, you open up by talking about the cost of food or food prices or feeding your family. And that's a nice way when I speak to schools or have the opportunity to speak in that sort of environment, and they are so sharp with their mathematics and you could put them to the test, because we have doubles. The price of doubles now is six, $7 around there, right? And you have the most expensive restaurant meals. They might go porter, Spain and people pay $300 for a plate of something. Agreed. So in that span, mathematics not the best. So let's just say average meal would cost you $20 in this country to eat something basic, right? Sadaru and Fryal, whatever. And $20 by 1.4 million people. And we all hope to eat three meals per day. Agreed. So the mathematics would tell us that per day in this country at a minimum. Because remember, using $20, right, you can't get lunch. No way. For 20.
At a minimum, $84 million in meals on average is served per day in this country. All right, for the year that takes us, over $30 billion is circulating in this food and beverage industry in terms of business and turnover. Now the big question is how is that driving agricultural economics? Not only in terms of manufacturing, retail and foreign trade. And the buz thing on social media right now is the sales volume for chicken and chips in 2023, right? So that unit alone was, I think, over a billion dollars or something like that. So if the food and beverage industry, from my mediocre example here, is looking at this turnover in transactions or this transactional value of over 30 billion, it gives us the idea that we are, as a population taught over the years or led to believe for various reasons that agriculture is at a minimum. All right. I do not hold that perception because the public opinion is not separated into food and agriculture. Anything happens with your food. Like you mentioned, food prices. We automatically think about agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, responsibility of farmers and so on. But they don't impact the shelf. When you go to buy your conquerors, your peanuts and whatever it is, those form part of your food basket. Yes, but they come through manufacturing and imports. So it's two parallel conversations, if you could follow me, which is happening in terms of farmers and agriculture. And then there's a wider food industry. So when the budget time comes around and we say that agriculture is offering it nearly a contributor, not into GDP and so on. Okay, because you are using statistics that compares the value of primary commodities traded at Inamdevco markets and so on, those basic foods, and you are not included in that conversation. The value of your food and beverage industry, as I just that we leave that part, that saucy part to describe non energy manufacturing, to show that that unit or that subsector is booming. You see that difference? So when the Ministry of Trade addresses the conversation, they take all the fame and the prowess for that part of the conversation and leave us by the roadside, which I think is something we need to recharacterize in order to raise the respect of the men, women, boys and girls that I open by describing.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: That is such an interesting perspective and the clinical manner in which you've approached it is also interesting that there is a deliberate attempt from what you're saying to skew these statistics when it comes to agriculture and what really constitutes food production and us being able to feed ourselves. I mean, the math, when it comes to the money, that's at the lowest end of the rung. It could be much higher than what you're talking about, obviously.
And it changes.
If you accept the information, it changes or it should change your perspective of this thing called agriculture.
I've had the opportunity, as I said, to speak to some people who are involved directly and there are some farmers. Why, it has some farmers doing small agriculture and they catch in the tail to sell their produce by the side of the road. You have persons who are engaged in such large scale, lucrative agriculture in this country that when you get an insight into what they're actually doing, it leaves you speechless with the production. Number one, the amount of money that they're making off of this thing, and all of it is more or less done as private enterprise and not with the government's assistance. Because when you speak to these people, they say they are time to wait on the government to get a little loan to buy a tractor or to do this or that or the next or the other. They do it on their own.
So with this false perception that we have of the agriculture sector and the impression that, well, the agriculture sector don't help us in no way or the other. Now that we have information to suggest otherwise, let's take it back to citizen responsibility.
And let me allow you to tell people what their responsibility is when it comes to food security.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: That's a real good summary there, save my winding up citizen responsibility. So one is, of course, well, as I keep, I just want to reiterate, which is to respect the circumstances of these people, because some of us leave home, we sit in traffic, you complain about it, they talk about how much hours, productive hours people lose and so on. But on the opposite side, the devil's advocate will say how much of that time you come into the office to spend on Facebook or to do non productive activity throughout the day? And there's all these discussions, but when our farmer hit that hot Sunday, he don't have time to check Facebook and send a tweet or whatever. All right? So the respect that I'm mentioning there comes from all angles in terms of honoring people that actually feed you, which is a cultural emblem. That's something you pin to your chest from the day you're born. Somebody feeds you, so to speak. All right? And that has implications.
I'm not one of those philosophers like your sad guru hunting with all these quips, but it's just to say that we train our babies from boots, some people, working parents and so on. Life is such a way now that you need at least two income streams and all these lingo that people talk about in the reality of the day and the cost of living and the family structures in terms of accessing housing, a lot of tenanted apartments and different living arrangements now as compared to a few decades ago and so on, where you had the benefit of the extended family or the extended family home and the concept of the village is shifting so far. But it's only to say that the current modern, quote unquote modern lifestyle that we have taught us to use these breakfast cereals and baby foods and all these manufactured products. And what it says to me is that even from boot we are training or educating the taste buds of our children to eat things or to appreciate things that doesn't belong to us, which is your wheat based products, your oats, your peach, I don't know whatever is all the other flavors of these foods, but we don't teach them from early to appreciate breadfruit. I sure you wouldn't buy a bundle at Amran and car at home for your children just like that. So you know what I mean? That has to be crude or naive to the topic is that the actions we take from boot tend to have us appreciate things that doesn't belong to us, which is developing that imported taste and preference. So by the time you reach into the school system and you try to teach children through the national forage clubs and so on, or through any even like school lunches and so on, or you try to drive and eat local type of education or understanding to educate taste buds in that direction, people actually feel eating local as a form of punishment because if all their life, again, nice peach and whatever other flavors and somebody bring out passion fruit juice and you can handle the acid because accustomed drinking soda from ever since and so on, you cause a dilemma in children. And you could see the way that some of the food is wasted. Food loss and waste is so real in this country, you tend to be shocked because if on one side we're talking about food prices and affordability, and then you look at food loss and waste, which is something still not in the national conversation. It will show you that there's a dichotomy in terms of goals or where the citizens are being guided in appreciating the seriousness of the situation. But if I could add one more layer to that, which is when we talk about eat local, it's not a starvation effort of any sort, because since 2012, which was our 50th anniversary of independence, together with the Table and Pineapple Farmers association, national forage Clubs and so on, we've championed and eat locally in this country, which is usually the last week of school, we celebrated in schools and with the University of the West Indies in the last few years to carry that type of education. But it is not to say that we demonize imports at the same time. In the earlier conversation we had a few minutes ago, I was showing about the value of this food and beverage industry. And of course, when you go to watch your movies in Port of Spain, whatever you buy there, we don't grow none of that on farms. Agreed. If you go into your supermarket, when you walk through that front door, nothing you're looking at there does grow anywhere in this country, any corner, any back, they might have a nice green section that farmers find a place in, the air condition on the shelf. But those manufacturer food that are all over the food system, those are not grown directly. They're not primary commodities. So the conversation is not at the same time to demonize imports because people have their different views. But I just like to leave one with you and your listeners, which is, let's use ketchup, for example. All right. Well, I don't know the constituents of ketchup right now. Sometimes I tend to doubt if it actually have tomato paste in it or coloring. But I'm only saying to make ketchup, you import the tomato paste from whichever country and it comes to the port of. Port of Spain. Agreed. From there it would go, let's just say, to Diamondvale Industrial estate. But along the way, you would have been paying your taxes, whatever fees you pay, you would have been causing to be hired port workers who protested recently, the security, truck drivers and so on, people in logistics. It would go to Diamondvale Industrial estate at a food manufacturing facility to be produced into ketchup as an additive. But at that point, we are paying food scientists or technologists, security, all the people who are there. And again, to leave that facility, you would be paying people in marketing, packaging and all these other things to create that product. And then you'd pay along the logistics to distribute ketchup. All right, so that food mile is so far, that origin, the origin of that PSA travel all this way, and I reach diamond veil at the moment. But if you and your family go Mayaro for the weekend, which is on the opposite end of the country on the southeastern seaboard, you can go to any supermarket by petal, by whoever, and buy a pack of ketchup, let's just say for $10. All right, now think about all that story I just gave about where that ketchup is traveling, but think about all the people that it caused to be employed along the way, which is again, well, Saturn and farmers somewhere in the world, of course, but you're coming down into logistics, retail and distribution, food technology, manufacturing, all of it, security, whoever.
But when we demonize imports and you say cut back, cut out, and people have all these convenient kind of whiplash conversations, what else is there in this economy to employ all those people?
I only use in ketchup as one example, but there are many more, of course, that, you know, constitute the manufacturing sector of food. Manufacturing specifically. So when we say cut off is a sort of double edged sword, because where are we going to redirect all these people? And they are not just happening by vaps. Remember, people go to school to learn human nutrition and dietetics, food sciences, consumer sciences. We educate them through gate and other funding mechanisms to learn marketing and social sciences. You know what I mean? So when we just vaps talk about demonizing imports, that's something also as a citizen or consumer, we need to appreciate that it doesn't also happen like that because it has form or embedded part of the economy. But what we should be concerned about in imports as citizens is that the continued importation of primary or even primary processed commodities that directly compete with farmers, fisher folk and other entrepreneurs on a local food value chain. Right? Because in that it is a heavy. When you talk about the food import bill of 6 billion tt dollars on average per year, it is the import of intermediary products and concentrates that feed our local manufacturing sector. They are not direct for human consumption. So we can't also demonize citizens for saying is all they import in it, is all they eat in it. No, it is the fraction of that for direct human consumption is what we would have to discuss.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
The issues are not necessarily as straightforward as someone may think, listening or looking on at what's taking place in the country.
We speak a lot about imports versus local and all those kinds of things. But cost is definitely a factor in persons making decisions.
It's a situation where you could get four apple for $10, but four orange will cost you $20.05. Mango cost you $20, twice as much. Do talk about avocado, zabuka, that's 30, $40 if you could get one.
But there are some that are imported that sell for $10.
And cassava flour. We tried that, it was too expensive.
There are countries in the world like Vietnam and Indonesia and some of these places where the diet of the nation hinges heavily on what they produce. The availability of fast foods and foreign items is not as widely available as we have it here, and those populations are healthier. And their food import bill, it's minuscule. But that's because these people consume what they produce through maybe because of circumstances, they didn't have access. Many of them don't have the ability to buy these foods, and because of tradition, they're accustomed to eating what they grow and that kind of thing. Is it a situation where we need to go back there or we need to strike a balance between what exists now and what should be taking place when it comes to what we consume?
[00:27:23] Speaker A: That's a very powerful observation. What you have observed there, from my language, is the triumph of foreign franchise capitalism.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Correct?
[00:27:34] Speaker A: All right.
You know what that means, which is we tend to look at, well, we tend to feed off of, firstly, their manufacturing outputs and in addition to that, their marketing efforts, which has led us to believe over the years that those things are perhaps superior.
Modern documentary shows us what happens behind the scenes in terms of food manufacturing and the push to get children and different strat of the population to consume certain foods, empty calories and so on. We know at length about the junk snacks, the fast foods and so on. Of course, I'm not the stallion or the beacon of health education in the country, but it's only to say that we have lost that battle to some extent to foreign franchise capitalism.
But all hope, sorry, is not lost. Drawing on the example you gave, and I could also add my own experience in China, I had an invitation, two invitations just before the pandemic by the government of China to explore one, which was in the first instance at Beijing Agriculture University. It was their policy planning and development history in agriculture and rural development. And in 2019 July, I was invited again as a follow up series of sort of investigations, visiting at manufacturing companies and so on, and farmers to look at food safety systems in terms of agricultural commodities and farm products and in those two exposures, of course, being the person that I am, to also look around the food system that is there, because we tend to loosely talk about fake foods and all these type of things emanating from that market. And again, it is driven by western media, the access, our access to that, and not really understanding what is there on the ground in China, we don't access that type of news or that type of information directly.
And what I have found is that, just as you are saying, when you go to the villages, like you go to Sangang village, where we went and there, I understood that China is in fact the largest producer of almond nuts in the world. But if you check the statistics, they really cannot export none simply because all of it is consumed locally. All right, but they are the largest producer in the early volume. Of course, I wouldn't remember the statistics of Macau right now, but it's only to say that even in those rural villages, when you go, the restaurants, there are not the franchisees that we see on every junction in this country, or every quarter stop on the highway. It is restaurants built on what is offered in that geographic area. So in Sangang village, which is a mountainous area, you wouldn't expect to know shrimp or lobster or something of that nature, but you would find food and tree crops and so on, meals prepared out of what exists, just as you are suggesting there. And I think we have that same cultural influence. You see, eating doubles on the oil belt.
We tend to associate, we call it territorial marketing. Now, when you fancy words, which is when you hear maracas, bacon shark, even, I believe bacon shark whistling somewhere in the back of your head. So you tend to associate places with foods. And I think we probably need, in terms of local tourism, driving, local economic development. And you may or may not know that even many regional corporations, there are led officers, persons who supposedly supposed to be looking after driving that type of economic activity, I think we should pay a bit more focus on them, or maybe resource them better to take us back to that territorial marketing that gives places an affinity, or give in the minds of public or public opinion, that they should go there to experience certain foods, bring back that loyalty to the land. And even though through the role of education and so on, in 2017, I should say that we attracted Sesame street to Tran Tobago. I'm not sure how many people even know that. And we carried them into table land in George village, in ibade to experience what is known as the table and pineapple, or the sugarloaf pineapple. And the beauty about that is the producers of Sesame street found us on social media, always peddling, we always talking about the issues. They're very easy to talk about the issues, as you know, involved in agriculture. But they also saw photos and experiences of us being in schools, being involved at different levels of education with the four h clubs and so on. And they reach out to us. But there's only to say that their purpose was to educate their audience, which is over 500 million people around the world in terms of, again, where their food comes from, how it is produced, and to respect those producers and the message of that segment, which is available on YouTube and so on. You could use the keywords of pineapple, Trinidad, Sesame street or whatever to find it. The key message was educating urban children or youths that pineapples came from the hard work of these farmers. They didn't come on a shelf in the supermarkets in the urban area and so on. So internally, when we talk about driving domestic tourism and rural economic development and so on, these are also dimensions. Aside from the carnival festivals and all of that whiplash that we suffer, there are other more sustainable things that we could be invested to. And again, it is linked to food and agriculture.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: Well, a pet peeve of mine is the lack of interest that we show in domestic tourism. You have some people who live their entire lives and have not visited some of the gems that exist in Trinidad and Tobago. There are some people who live their whole life in Trinidad, never went across to Tobago and vice versa. I know that for a fact. When it comes to our culinary tourism, we have a wealth that outsiders just looking for. Some of them just don't know it's available. What we have now is a groundswell where you have individuals engaging in these tours and carrying people from our Sunday to drive down Meharo, wherever else, to buy fish that they're roasting and take them up to Toko. But as a country, we don't see that as important.
We've never seen it as important, and you've highlighted it. We continue to focus on one element of our culture, only thinking that's what people want. We need to take a couple messages, though, when we get back. Probably take a couple of calls. There are people who want to get involved in the conversation, put across a point, ask a question, feel free to do so. Our special guest this morning, we are speaking to Dr. Omarat Maharaj. We started off by speaking about the Brinsley Samuru lecture that's going to take place on Saturday at the NCIC, the Bisram Gopi auditorium in shagonas.
The discussion has moved on to food prices and food security and everything else. So when we get back after these messages, we'll continue our conversation. Take some of your calls. Stay with us.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk Radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
We do have with us speaking about food security, citizens responsibility, Dr. Omidad Maharaj. But unfortunately, our time with him is up because he does have prior commitments. Dr. Maharaj, nice to have you with us. As we know, I've been trying to get you on the program for a long time to discuss many of these things, and we've just scratched the surface in this discussion that we had on some of the things that we need to be.
Let's, as we end our conversation this morning, let me allow you to give people some advice on if people are finding themselves with challenges when it comes to their food and feeding themselves. One suggestion made on the program some time ago is people to grow things so that they have one less thing to buy.
What would be some of your advice to our listeners?
[00:35:40] Speaker A: Well, satish before the time runs out. I just want to, of course, start the closing by saying thanks for this forum and this opportunity to keep the national conversation alive, not only in our own interests, because we hope to eat at least three times per day and provide same for families and children. But through this conversation, we are actually championing the livelihoods of thousands of people out there who may not have the access to an audience to be heard about these same issues. So, yes, at every forum you might find that farmers tend to be passionate about problems and constraints that they have. We really need to find opportunities, just as you are suggesting. And those opportunities come from first appreciating and accepting the situation about food security in this country and perhaps those that exist in the caricom space. And to appreciate the responsibilities, as we open the discussion by saying so, we cannot lament about other parties, whether it's government, manufacturing, importers, whoever it is, we cannot lament about their shortcomings when, again, we in fact, as citizens, are not holding our end of the responsibility. And that responsibility comes in different ways. It first of all comes from being the designing consumer. So some people tend to buy illicit or contraband foods. The minister of agriculture had a statement recently about that trade happening between Venezuela and perhaps other places. In terms of unregulated food imports, it wouldn't really be imports, but unregulated food coming into the food system unchecked. And there are other conversations about the failure of border control and so on. But the point is if you bring a carcass, go to whatever it is from Venezuela, it's slaughtered and sold in the market. The consumer doesn't know, all right, if I go any market and I feel and eat goat this Sunday, I buy some, I wouldn't know if that die on a boat and they chop it up and they're selling it in Chuanas, I have no way of knowing that. And that is how dangerous the food system is in this country. Without quality assurance, without a food drug testing lab, routine checks on the municipal markets, the enforcement of farmer badges, for example, or even when you're selling food, the simple food badge that gives the consumer the indication that there's regulation and checks about where our food comes from or where it came from. And that's the only way we could validate origin. So citizens should of course put pressure in demanding that type of quality assurance in a food system. So one, you wouldn't be buying contraband, and by extension we wouldn't be buying things that are stolen in Valencia, in Walla field, whether it's crop and livestock or whatever it is, but sold in shoguna, since San Fernando and so on. And the prices and that type of trade is of course relatively cheaper because people want to get rid of it. They are not farmers, they are not processors, they do not have storage or equipment or whether it be a small abattoir or anything like that. So they want to sell these things very quickly because it rot. And we as consumers are guilty because we like piper price when thing cheap. You want to buy and sell your family and then go down by the plywood, have a man selling orange 100 for 20, things like that. But we don't stop for a minute to appreciate that is the blood, sweat and tears of an actual farmer. This man just thinks so in terms of citizen responsibility. We want to be more mindful about that food system. Number one, we want to enforce the role of education. Education doesn't mean coming to the university alone. At the UE we have so many programs in food and agriculture, whether it's human nutrition, dietetics, agribusiness, geography, you name it, they have that type of education. Agreed. But there are also other forms of education. For example, I made a major point in my mind when we went into this Covid-19 experience, which is that the children who belong to four h clubs in their respective schools around this country in Trinidad and Tobago, had an advantage. And we did not use that opportunity to bolster them or bolster their rules because they could have while the place was on lockdown, taught their own families how to grow a little okro, how to set tomato, how to do whatever, you understand. But we did not all the noise we were making in that time about losing the rights to buy chicken and chips and whatever people were thinking about. We did not redirect resources through that national voyage system to support those members who would have today, of course, been pillars of success. And coming out of the COVID experience, neither did we celebrate entities like the Voyage Club, who actually carried informal agricultural extension support. People were all over social media asking for how to grow this, they're doing this. And it became such a buzz during that time. And as soon as we open mark up Christmas, when it was 2021 to do shopping for Christmas, everybody forget about home garden. So the role of education, it has a cultural undertone to it. But definitely we need to refocus the priorities and our priorities on not as I well, the first point was, of course, where the food comes from, respecting that origin. The second point now is about education and how you access that form of empowerment to feed yourself. And then we link it to what you just said about growing things at home or in the spaces that you have. And we know that there are challenges. We know there's a giant african snail. We know there are two foot pests. There are all kind of pests inside of there, and all of those things are bound. But that should not prevent you from living life, as they say, life needs to go on. And that education, if we got to tie up that point, is happening also from public education and awareness, which is like the same eat locally, the same things are attracted. Sesame Street, National Fruit Festival, all these types of agricultural activities, we should push our citizens for more of that where we could access information, make connections, knowing farmers, getting to know people personally, learning how to grow, learning about different production systems and so on. So, yes, I did say that the structure of life now has moved, sorry, a lot more into tenanted apartments, shared living arrangements, townhouses, things that really didn't exist a few decades ago. But there are still things that we can do for ourselves, just as you said, to knock meals off the plate.
And finally, what I should say is to be a more mindful consumer. We work hard for our money. Yes, but if you look at minimum wage, all right, if you look at minimum wage and the value that pays you per day, and you see the price of a tree piece meal, now a tree piece of fried chicken. So it means, therefore, that if I work whole day for minimum wage and at the end of it, I'm so tired and I have my little family of four or five and I want to buy a meal to take them home. I probably need to work two days in order to afford one family meal. And that is a frightening situation that we need to reverse in this country. Thank you very much.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I want to thank you for being with us. I'm sure that we will have further conversations because as I said, we only scratch the surface on this thing. Thank you for being with us here this morning.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
