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Caribbean Islands Land Tenure and Use
Trinidad and Tobago's total land area covers 513,000 hectares,
of which less than one-third was arable. Approximately 11,000
hectares, or only 2 percent of total area, were devoted to pasture,
the lowest percentage in Latin America or the Caribbean. By
contrast, approximately 45 percent of total land was forest or
woodland, making timber abundant. Although Trinidad's three
corridors of mountains place the greatest restriction on
agricultural activity, the plains between the ranges were generally
fertile. Only about 13 percent of the arable land was irrigated,
but there were numerous streams and small rivers. Flooding was
common during the rainy season.
According to the most recent agricultural census from the early
1970s, there were over 35,000 farms on Trinidad and Tobago,
occupying nearly 130,000 hectares. The average farm had 6 hectares,
but the 40 largest farms were extremely large, all over 400
hectares. Landholdings were usually of two kinds. Small farms were
numerous, used traditional methods, and produced mostly food crops
for the domestic market. Larger farms were generally more capital
and input intensive and produced cash crops for export. Land
distribution on the islands was not believed to be as skewed as in
other Commonwealth Caribbean islands; in 1987 current data were
unavailable, however. The relative abundance of land and the large
availability of state lands did not make land reform or
landownership a prominent issue. In fact, the opposite was true;
Trinidad and Tobago had difficulty retaining citizens in rural
areas to work the land.
Agricultural inputs such as machinery, fertilizers, and
technical assistance were generally available but were mostly
utilized for export crops. Although agriculture was increasingly
mechanized, it was still relatively labor intensive. According to
the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization, Trinidad
and Tobago had only 2,500 tractors in use in 1983, or only 8
tractors per 1,000 hectares. This made Trinidad and Tobago less
machinery intensive than Jamaica. In spite of being one of the
leading producers and exporters of fertilizers in the world,
Trinidad and Tobago's fertilizer use in the 1980s was still below
1970 levels. In 1983 approximately forty-nine kilograms per hectare
of fertilizer were used compared with sixty-five kilograms in 1970
and forty-five kilograms in 1975. Although the Ministry of
Agriculture, Lands, and Food Production provided some technical
assistance in the rehabilitation of various aging and diseased tree
crops, these programs were generally unsuccessful, and yields
continued to decline. In 1982 a successful citrus rehabilitation
program was introduced, however, which helped expand citrus output
in the mid- to late 1980s.
Government agricultural policies did not focus on technical
assistance per se but instead utilized pricing policies, such as
subsidies, price controls, and guaranteed earnings for agriculture
producers. Subsidies, the most rapidly expanding portion of
government expenditure in the 1970s, were directed almost entirely
at agriculture, especially sugar and livestock. Because of the
small number of producers, however, price controls were also
introduced to keep prices at fair levels and to help subsidize
poorer consumers. As a result of the dwindling production of export
crops, the government also instituted guaranteed prices for
agricultural output that could be sold to the government via the
Central Marketing Agency. Agricultural research took place at the
regional Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute.
Although credit for farmers was available from numerous sources,
the most influential lender was the government's ADB.
Data as of November 1987
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