DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

Ex­ploit­ing the de­mand for lo­cal­ly fruit-based prod­ucts like man­goes re­quires new mod­els of do­ing busi­ness, from pro­duc­tion to man­age­ment, said Gregg Rawl­ins, rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co-op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA). "The de­sign of these new sys­tems of do­ing busi­ness is nec­es­sary as we shift from tra­di­tion­al back­yard sys­tems of pro­duc­tion to the es­tab­lish­ment of com­mer­cial­ly op­er­at­ed and man­aged fruit or­chards," Rawl­ins said. He said there was al­so need for ad­e­quate re­sources al­lo­cat­ed to da­ta gen­er­a­tion and analy­sis for the ex­pan­sion of this new man­go in­dus­try.

Rawl­ins was speak­ing at the sec­ond an­nu­al T&T Man­go Fes­ti­val host­ed by the Net­work for Rur­al Women Pro­duc­ers in col­lab­o­ra­tion with IICA, Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, UWI and Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny held at UWI Field Sta­tion on Sun­day. The fes­ti­val, ti­tled, A Cel­e­bra­tion of the Di­ver­si­ty and Util­i­ty of the Man­go, pro­mot­ed the util­i­sa­tion of more lo­cal­ly-pro­duced fruits, par­tic­u­lar­ly man­go as a raw ma­te­r­i­al for agro and cot­tage in­dus­tries. Rawl­ins said this would serve well as it was of­ten lament­ed there was a weak link be­tween pri­ma­ry agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and the agro-pro­cess­ing sec­tor, which has come to re­ly heav­i­ly on im­port­ed fruits and veg­eta­bles.

He said it was im­por­tant to recog­nise the val­ue added prod­ucts cre­at­ed from the man­go, not on­ly for the po­ten­tial of gen­er­at­ing high­er lev­els of rev­enue, but al­so as a so­lu­tion to re­duc­ing the peren­ni­al wastage of this fruit. The fes­ti­val, he said, was al­so geared to stim­u­late the de­vel­op­ment of the rur­al cot­tage in­dus­try of T&T, bring na­tion­al at­ten­tion to food de­vel­op­ment, high­light the con­tri­bu­tion of rur­al com­mu­ni­ties and pro­mote eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties through the sus­tain­able use of the man­go. Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments was Prof Dy­er Nar­i­nesingh, dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Agri­cul­ture, UWI.

"In or­der to en­sure sus­tain­able food and nu­tri­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion, it was im­per­a­tive that we de­vel­op new eco­nom­ic mod­els that was cen­tral to eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, from which would flow food and nu­tri­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, agro tourism, en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, chem­i­cals, tex­tiles and recre­ation," Nar­i­nesingh said. Af­ter list­ing the many us­es and ben­e­fits of the man­go, Nar­i­nesingh said this mul­ti-pur­pose tree can cre­ate hu­man em­ploy­ment as­so­ci­at­ed with grow­ing, har­vest­ing, ship­ment and pro­cess­ing of bil­lions of man­goes a year.

"The man­go fruit is of great eco­nom­ic im­por­tance, es­pe­cial­ly in the de­vel­op­ing coun­tries where 10,000 tonnes or more are yield­ed, but it has a high meta­bol­ic rate and a short stor­age life in nor­mal at­mos­pher­ic con­di­tions. "There­fore, due to its in­creased de­mand for ex­port, the short stor­age life, chill­ing in­juries and ab­nor­mal ripen­ing UWI is com­mit­ted to en­gag­ing in more re­search to ad­dress the pro-har­vest stor­age of the man­go and oth­er fruits and veg­eta­bles," he said. Sarah Mara­jh, from the re­search unit of the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, said the gov­ern­ment of Oman ap­proached the min­istry to as­sist in cre­at­ing a man­go en­cy­clo­pe­dia.