Cabinet must confront the brutal reality that Trinidad and Tobago is sleepwalking into a full scale food security crisis, an import bill exploding from TTD $5 billion to over $7.3 billion, with over 96% of what we eat coming from abroad, is not just unsustainable, it is reckless economic management.
While Guyana is expanding agricultural output and positioning itself as a regional food supplier, and Singapore, despite limited land built resilience through strategic planning, efficiency, and zero tolerance for corruption, T&T continues to drift, plagued by poor execution, idle agricultural lands, and systemic governance failures.
Every dollar spent importing basic food is a dollar exported from our economy, weakening foreign exchange, driving up the cost of living, and exposing citizens to global shocks.
This is no longer a policy discussion, it is a national emergency requiring immediate action: unlock and incentivize large scale agriculture, eliminate bureaucratic bottlenecks, enforce accountability across the system, and treat food production as a matter of national security, because a country that cannot feed itself is a country that has surrendered control of its future.
Gordon Laughlin
Westmoorings
