Cocoa farmer Jude Lee Sam picks cocoa with a rod on his La Vega estate last Monday.

The strong, rich scent of drying cocoa beans filled the air at La Vega Estate in Gran Couva, last Monday, defying an announcement by worried farmer, Jude Lee Sam, that small cocoa farmers are on the verge of extinction. Crested oropendolas (corn birds) created a happy racket in a tree on the quiet ten-acre estate, while a worried Lee Sam, sitting in the shade of the cocoa house, told of his fear of the end of cocoa for small farmers.

“Small cocoa farmers are going to be extinct just now,” said Lee Sam, president of the newly formed Montserrat Cocoa Farmers Association. Lee Sam, whose cocoa roots go deep, was particularly worried about the decline of the industry in Gran Couva, reputedly home of the best cocoa beans in the world. He said several small cocoa estates in T&T and worldwide were being abandoned, because farmers were just barely breaking even, while middlemen, producers and chocolatiers were raking in big profits from the product.

Too many middlemen
“Cocoa fetches a good price internationally; around $30 a kilo. But there are too many middlemen between the farmers and chocolatiers. “I sell cocoa to a buying agent, who takes it to a producer, who prepares it for export by polishing, grading and bagging it. “The producers put the cocoa in a container for shipping. The CCIB (Cocoa and Coffee Industry Board) is responsible for all exports. When it is sold, I get $18 a kilo from the CCIB.” Lee Sam said small farmers couldn’t eliminate these middlemen and export their own cocoa, because they don’t produce the 20,000 kilos stipulated by the CCIB.

“You must produce 20,000 kilos in order to get an export licence from the CCIB, but small farmers produce only between 300 kilos and 1,000 kilos.” Farmers are so worried about their survival that they have banded together for the first time and formed the Montserrat Cocoa Farmers Association. “With our combined cocoa, we’re hoping to approach the CCIB for an export licence so we can sell directly to a buyer,” Lee Sam said. “It’s not a level playing field at all. We must be given a chance to compete. “If we can’t get a group licence, the CCIB should lessen its restrictions,” Lee Sam said. Lee Sam attended the International Cocoa Conference in Port-of-Spain in March, in which 300 delegates from 29 countries participated, and said farmers worldwide had the same cry. The increasing abandonment of small estates have left international chocolatiers without enough beans, especially from T&T, one of three countries in the world that produces prime cocoa, he said.

The result?
“Foreign chocolatiers are now coming to the source of cocoa, buying out hundreds of acres of abandoned estates and producing their own beans,” Lee Sam said. “Usually, they have local entrepreneurs working in partnership with them. We can’t compete with them. If more estates close down, it would make more room for foreign investors. The San Juan Estate in Gran Couva, formerly owned by the Agostinis, is now reportedly under the control of a German chocolate manufacturing company and a local company. Lee Sam said another former major local conglomerate had also bought out estates in Lapeyrouse, Gran Couva, Tamana and Moruga, and were into cocoa production in a big way. “They, reportedly, have foreign links.” Lee Sam said this move exacerbated the labour problem, crippling small cocoa farmers.

“Workers are being paid higher salaries by the bigger estates, and are demanding the same from small farmers. “But there are still those who would rather work in a store than in cocoa.” Lee Sam said villages in Gran Couva were established through cocoa after land plots of were rented to estate labourers. He said descendants of these labourers today didn’t want to hear anything about cocoa, however, because of the stigma attached to it. “Local whites ran the early estates. After the Black Power movement of the 1970s, people no longer wanted to work for ‘massa.'” Lee Sam almost single-handedly cultivates his own cocoa, and is able to make a little profit this way. “I also grow plantain, bananas and citrus to supplement my income.” He sun-dries his cocoa beans in a cocoa house he built, and during the rainy season uses a makeshift contraption involving hair dryers.

Minister Promises
Agriculture Minister Arnold Piggott, during an agricultural symposium in Tableland on May 5, promised to work with the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) and the CCIB on revitalising cocoa estates. Efforts to get a comment from Piggott and ADB CEO, Jacqueline Rawlins, proved futile, however. A CCIB source said 12,500 kgs of cocoa filled one small container for shipment. “The CCIB Act requires that if you want to export cocoa, you must have the required volume on your land. “I don’t think the board is about preventing development.”