Plantains - An excerpt from The Trinidad Guardian

Marie Antoinette is reputed to have said:
“Let them eat cake.”
Now Patos and Arnie are saying:
“Let dem eat plantain.”

Brilliant .......Bring on “de 20 / 20 Vision” and pass de word ..... ahm, sorry, de plantain...
...

Wednesday 8th October, 2008

Plantain to replace parboiled rice—Piggott





RICHARD LORD Agriculture Minister Arnold Piggott says the amount of parboiled rice used in this country is to be reduced and replaced by plantain. Piggott announced this during his contribution to Monday’s Senate debate on the 2008/2009 national budget. He outlined the Government’s plan to increase food production and reduce the importation of certain food items. Piggott said the current “level of dependency on imported food is, at this time, at an unacceptable level.” Dealing with the importation of parboiled rice, Piggott said: “We are proposing that some of that be replaced with plantain and that would target 6,080 tonnes on 1,216 acres of land. Wheat, we are targeting replacement by cassava and mixed crops and we are looking at increasing the tonnage there on 1,010 acres of land.” Piggott said locally produced sweet potato was to replace the imported Irish potato. Piggott said T&T imported more than nine per cent of staples and more than eight per cent of legumes it consumed. “This pattern must be changed,” he stressed. He slammed critics who say the mega farms have not been established to date. He said: “It must be appreciated that these are capital projects, which involved a medium term type of cycle before they can begin to bear significant fruit.” He added: “Preparation of land for commercial activities in agriculture cannot produce immediate results... indeed a lot of work has been done in preparing these farms to prospective investors.” Piggott said the Government was close to establishing a system of crop insurance for farmers. And he said each family in the country must move to plant at least two fruit trees in their backyards. On high food prices, Piggott said it was caused by “unnecessarily long supply chains for local produce, very unreasonable mark-ups, an inadequate production and marketing information systems.”