Mysterious disease kills all food crops

Dec 25, 2013 Letters

Dear Editor,
Growing vegetable crops in my roadside plot at Suddie, Region Two has always been a joy of my life. Now sadness prevails from the fatal destruction of the plants in a “mysterious” soil disease.
Through no fault of my own the area that used to be under cultivation has become useless, idle and abandoned because of the alarming death rate. These things make living conditions all the more difficult for me.
Plants especially in tomatoes, boulangers and peppers no longer exist on my plot.
It grieves me very much to be divorced from this pleasurable and beneficial activity when it was possible to be self sufficient and to use vegetables conveniently and lavishly. The situation is now different. I have to come out of my pocket to make purchases and to skimp on what I buy, sometimes.
My only recourse now is to seek the intervention of the Minister of Agriculture for technical assistance which I did in writing two times by registered post to his head office in the city. There has been no response and this neglect in such a serious matter is not good enough at all.
No other Ministry can be of help to me. Clearly some form of action is urgently needed to determine the nature of the disease, what is responsible for its existence, how it could be avoided, what treatment could be administered to exterminate it or whether it is not curable.
With a research centre at NARI, I don’t know of the facilities that exist there but the symptoms show a parasite in the soil from ground level eating out the bark and causing the plants to wither and then die.
The findings whether good or bad will be very useful as for sure it would save me from wasting more money on drugs not helpful to the cause. It is useless to have land when it cannot be utilized beneficially.
Baliram Persaud

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