CONCLUSION AND SCOPE FOR FUTURE WORK

 This project has been a learning experience, in particular my knowledge of agriculture in general has greatly increased. The project took on a big picture view of agriculture and a very by the numbers approach to what could help the local agriculture sector. I didn't learn the ins and out of farming but more the large scale production side of things. Its clear to see that we don't grow enough to support ourselves and that can be said about all the island nations in the Caribbean (except maybe Cuba as data on that country may not be easily available). Even with a high food import bill across the Caribbean, there are allot of overweight people, which implies that so far food has been accessible to the majority of people. Exceptions to this are Haiti, due to social, economic and disaster related issues that are frequently being faced. This means that people are choosing to eat foods that fill them but don't provide a balanced nutritional profile. The proposed diet plan was designed to provide balanced nutrition along with a very affordable price point, but as seen from the survey on 60% of participants approved of the diet. A small sample of 28 people cant represent the whole of Trinidad and Tobago and across the entire population it may get a better reception but I don't think it will improve much if at all due to how non typical the diet plan is. It has a lot of similarities to Mediterranean diets with the high amount of seafood and vegetables present in the diet plan but at least 9 people said they didn't like the seafood and would prefer more chicken. That wouldn't be a difficult change cost wise, but fish tend to have essential (healthy) fats and other good nutritional content. Some changes to what we eat needs to take place, even if it is slight adjustments, in order to achieve more balanced diets and food security.

Improvements to the data sets from the CSO would be appreciated as some of the listings were very unclear about what they were. This is somewhat understandable as Trinidad receives a lot of trade and listing everything in exact detail with no mistakes can be difficult to achieve. More detailed accounts may still be needed however as food security is very important to have and not having it can really be felt when issues with importing food occur (like during a global shortage, supply chain issues and international conflicts). 

New technologies like transparent solar panels or luminescent solar concentrators allow for power generation along with crop production. This can potentially allow for self sufficient power generation and any extra energy could be stored in batteries or as hydrogen for transportation purposes. There is also the increasing presence of IOT in agriculture and the ability to keep accurate sensor data about growing conditions could allow farmers to better determine when to water plants, how much water to use and when to plant. this leads to less wastage of water and more control over growing conditions as some plants (like strawberries) require a high degree of environmental control to grow in a tropical climate.