Lin­da Hutchin­son-Ja­far

Freeport small farm­ers Chem­raj and Si­ta Ram­sa­roop and their three chil­dren, a fourth gen­er­a­tion farm­ing fam­i­ly with few re­sources, used scrap iron and oth­er ma­te­ri­als to mod­i­fy and en­hance equip­ment and ma­chin­ery for the agri­cul­ture fields on which they grow root crops and veg­eta­bles.

Their cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion as small farm­ers earned them spe­cial men­tion and ac­knowl­edge­ment at the re­cent­ly held Fund for Agri­cul­tur­al Tech­nol­o­gy (Fonta­gro) con­test on fam­i­ly farm­ing, Com­pe­ti­tion of Suc­cess of cas­es of In­no­va­tion for fam­i­ly agri­cul­ture 2012. Some 112 en­tries from the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca were sub­mit­ted.

The Fonta­gro fund is an al­liance of the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean coun­tries that sup­ports re­search and in­no­va­tion in agri­cul­ture with the over­all ob­jec­tive of re­duc­ing pover­ty, pro­mot­ing com­pet­i­tive­ness and sus­tain­ing nat­ur­al re­sources. The fund is spon­sored by the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute on Agri­cul­ture (IICA) and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) with a fo­cus on the area of in­no­va­tion as a frame­work for ac­tion, strength­ened re­sults, im­pact and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge.

Dr Hum­ber­to Gomez, tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tion spe­cial­ist, IICA, said the Ram­sa­roops were iden­ti­fied for spe­cial men­tion by the in­de­pen­dent ref­er­ees be­cause of a com­bi­na­tion of en­gi­neer­ing and man­age­ment de­spite the lack of for­mal ed­u­ca­tion.

Their de­signs met the needs of small pro­duc­tion units, as Caribbean farm­ers are small and lack equip­ment, and there was a fo­cus on fam­i­ly and team work, strong work ethics and will­ing­ness to help oth­ers.At a func­tion to ho­n­our the Ram­sa­roops and two oth­er par­tic­i­pants from T&T, Si­ta Ram­sa­roop told the gath­er­ing at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya that in every busi­ness, the strug­gle for sur­vival was in stay­ing ahead of the curve.

"We have wit­nessed the evo­lu­tion of our trade from the use of bi­son cart to wheel trac­tor. Due to the high cost of ma­chin­ery, we have de­vel­oped our own equip­ment from scrap ma­te­ri­als. We have al­so mod­i­fied stan­dard equip­ment to suit our spe­cif­ic needs. We have ap­proached mech­a­ni­sa­tion and in­no­va­tion as a means of sur­vival in agri­cul­ture," she said.

"At a time when most in our in­dus­try are tak­ing their chil­dren out of agri­cul­ture, we have man­aged to ad­vance our fam­i­ly in this very chal­leng­ing in­dus­try. We have sought to do this by find­ing in­no­v­a­tive ways of in­creas­ing our prof­itabil­i­ty," Ram­sa­roop added.

Iden­ti­fy­ing the myr­i­ad prob­lems fac­ing small, fam­i­ly-based farm­ers, in­clud­ing lack of reg­u­larised land tenure, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny, pests, com­pe­ti­tion with im­port­ed foods and high pro­duc­tion costs for labour, chem­i­cals and equip­ment, she said the great­est con­trol her fam­i­ly had was over pro­duc­tion cost."The cost of pro­duc­tion is dri­ven up sig­nif­i­cant­ly by the cost of labour. Mech­a­ni­sa­tion is the on­ly way of con­trol­ling this cost. This is why I start­ed by say­ing that we have ap­proached mech­a­ni­sa­tion and in­no­va­tion as a means of sur­vival.

"This in­no­v­a­tive spir­it is dri­ven by our pas­sion and love for what we do," she said, adding that "the ded­i­cat­ed hard work and love of fam­i­ly were the two most im­por­tant fer­tilis­ers that we use."

The win­ners of the FONTA­GRO con­test were

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