Rambharat: No leases for farmers in flood prone areas

MINISTER of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries Clarence Rambharat yesterday called on all farmers in vulnerable, flood prone areas to apply to the ministry to be relocated.

Speaking at a two-day Sub-regional Workshop on “A harmonized approach for conducting Post-Disaster Needs Assessment, Damage and Loss analysis and Reporting in the Agriculture sector,” at the Hyatt Regency in Port of Spain, Rambharat said farmers in flood prone areas will never attain a lease for the land.

He said farmers like those areas because the soil is extremely very rich, but it is a risky venture. “For example, the Tabaquite farmers are on the river bank. The North Aranguez farmers are on the Caroni River bank. Any water that comes over the bank they are going to be affected.

“They will never get a lease. I have been encouraging them to apply for relocation to safer lands. There are some farmers who are prepared to take the risk.” Rambharat said once a farmer is in a low-lying area and once there is excessive rainfall especially in a short period there will be rising waters.

He said farmers were also encouraged to put in the infrastructure that will take the water out of the fields. “We want them to also engineer the land in such a way that they are operating at a height where you will be less vulnerable to rising waters.

“The ministry have been working on two exercises which include the collection of data and how to react when there is bad weather conditions, or how to prepare our farmers for that.”

Rambharat said the ministry has been working with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) to develop a disaster risk management system.

Marion Alleyne, FAO assistant representative for TT and Suriname said the region remains among one of the most vulnerable in the world to extreme weather events that impact the agriculture sector annually which affects the quantity and quality of food. Alleyne said Agriculture tends to be one of the most vulnerable sectors to natural hazards and disasters.

She said recent studies by the FAO, between 2006 and 2016 shows the agriculture sector alone absorbed 23 per cent of total damage and loss caused by medium- to large-scale natural disasters worldwide.

“This resulted in approximately US $22 billion loss in crop and livestock production in Latin America and the Caribbean alone. “The 2017 hurricane season caused unprecedented levels of destruction across the Caribbean. Hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless and displaced.” Allyne said the findings of the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) led by the World Bank, the European Union and the United Nations Development Groups indicate that Hurricane Maria alone caused over USD 210 million in damages and losses to Dominica’s agriculture sector.