Food Policy - A good start

Using Caroni Lands to grow food is a wonderful idea, and I would like to acknowledge the Minister's effort in this regard.

The last administration, unable to effect a national food policy, advanced many reasons for this failure and none of them put forward are acceptable. Mr. Manning played cheap politics with the food basket of our nation and we are going to pay a heavy price for his policies.
While we have no guarantee that the plans of the new administration will bear fruit (please pardon the pun) I for one am willing to give them heavy credit for trying.

The backlash from globalization and it's love child global industrialization is being felt worldwide in the degradation of the delicate environment that sustains us all.
We live in a time where words like 'green' and eco-friendly' mean so much, especially as we watch global food sources dwindle, commodity prices skyrocket, water sources dry up, and weather patterns make the weather prediction job, well, unpredictable.

What is my rant about?

That for all their failings, one of the worst is the fact that the past administration did not have the ability to reconcile industrialization policies with environmental policies, and food production was relegated to unfulfilled campaign promises and treated as some bizarre science experiment.
Look, industrialization is a good thing and we acknowledge that, but not at the expense of long term survival; we need to eat, and God knows we need to breathe. How we arrived at a place where they became mutually exclusive perplexes me.

Where did this idea of either/or come from anyway? Surely we as a state can prioritize in our best interests, or are we not that mature as yet?

I for one do not think the benefits of the rapid rail at the expense of farm land and the environment has been definitively proven, and I sincerely believe we have many more cost effective treatments to try before we toss the baby out with the bath water.
'All In' is a sucker bet when you have nothing left to lose.

The smelter issue is obscene based solely on the science. Our island is too small, our ecology too delicate to be treated with such indifference in the face of existing data. We simply cannot afford the long term consequences of the short term gain.

There are always other options.

Mr. Manning said on the hustings that it was either Smelter or bhaghi. I thought that that statement was disgusting on many levels, and I will leave the obvious racial inference alone. Food production is a necessity and cannot be negotiated away on grandiose schemes. The future 'Developed Nations' of this world would have food and water independence for its people.
It's not too late to start.

I would like to suggest a board be set up to cross pollinate Food Production, the Environment and labor Ministries with a view to food self sufficiency by 2020.
It needs to go much further.
All fertile state lands should be earmarked for farming, and land reform legislation enacted on all unused farm land.

We need a halt on all quarrying activities and a regularization body set up, this time with teeth and the backing of the political will.

We need a water course policy that does more than take the water from the hills and dump it into the sea. One or two well built dams would save us millions in natural gas for electricity, stop flooding, preserve our fresh water, prevent drought, and positively impact the environment.

We need a forestry policy that provides for fire prevention and deals with illegal slash and burn farming decisively.

This is by no means a comprehensive or definitive list, but it's a good place to start.