Trinidad's interior is bursting with well-tended fields of melons, tomatoes, cabbages and peppers in quantities never seen before. The reason is not new fertilizers, miracle pesticides, or a spell of unusually good weather--it's better access roads.
Small-scale farmers here have traditionally faced a formidable adversary when the time came to take their produce to market. Local access roads, often mere tracks scratched across the hills and wetlands, were difficult to negotiate even in good weather. They became extremely hazardous during the June-to-December rainy season.
But now, crews of bulldozers and graders are hard at work, making modest but vital improvements such as widening the roads, building drainage works and even paving where traffic warrants. Forty-five segments of roads totalling 43 kilometers have already been improved, and construction contracts have just been signed for 29 additional segments, according to Louis Niles, transportation specialist in the IDB's Trinidad and Tobago office.
The project is part of an IDB-financed program to rehabilitate 150 km of access roads, reconstruct some 30 bridges and establish a maintenance system. The works are scheduled to be completed in 1999.
The new roads that have already been built, and the promise of more to come, have changed the outlook of the 600 farmers in the project area. Knowing that they can get their crops to market in better condition, at any time of the year, they are increasing their production and are being rewarded by unusually good prices, reports Niles.
Road improvements are having a similar effect in the island's more mountainous areas. There, farmers are switching from traditional crops to high-priced herbs.
Ministry of Agriculture extension agents are advising farmers on how to boost production of the higher value products.