GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

If you’re look­ing out for sor­rel to make your tra­di­tion­al hol­i­day drinks or even fes­tive condi­ments like rel­ish­es and jams, chances are the pop­u­lar fruit will not be in abun­dance this month.

This is be­cause sor­rel plants have been yield­ing a low­er pro­duc­tion this month com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year mak­ing even the red, white and even pink va­ri­ety dif­fi­cult to source, due to a num­ber of fac­tors in­clud­ing cli­mate change.

Nir­mala De­bysingh, CEO of the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co) who shared some fig­ur­ers with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian said the or­gan­i­sa­tion mon­i­tors about 3,700 farms in the coun­try as she ex­plained this num­ber falls un­der the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s purview.

Ac­cord­ing to the da­ta, she said there are 11.17 acres of sor­rel in pro­duc­tion based on Namde­v­co’s mon­i­tor­ing.

Com­pared to De­cem­ber 2023 this stood at 17.42 acres.

De­bysingh how­ev­er, not­ed that next month (Jan­u­ary 2025) and the fol­low­ing month (Feb­ru­ary 2025), more sor­rel is ex­pect­ed to be avail­able in the mar­kets and at the side of ma­jor thor­ough­fares.

On whether there has been a de­crease in the num­ber of sor­rel farm­ers, she said the da­ta did not re­flect this, not­ing that farm­ers who tra­di­tion­al­ly plant sor­rel will con­tin­ue to do so.

“We may have one or two farm­ers who will plant a lit­tle ex­tra or there may be some new farm­ers,” she added.

De­bysingh at­trib­uted the de­cline in sor­rel pro­duc­tion in De­cem­ber pri­mar­i­ly to the cli­mate pat­terns, which have re­sult­ed in some de­lay in the rate of ma­tu­ri­ty of the sor­rel fruit.

Sor­rel farmer for five years Kristien Je­bods­ingh echoed this sen­ti­ment, as he agreed that cli­mate change and dis­ease/pests pri­mar­i­ly con­tributed this year’s de­cline in sor­rel pro­duc­tion.

Je­bods­ingh, who has four acres of land, said this year he reaped close to 1,500 pounds of sor­rel.

How­ev­er, he was the vic­tim of pre­di­al lar­ce­ny at the be­gin­ning of No­vem­ber in which he lost “up­wards of 300 pounds of sor­rel.”

“On av­er­age that’s 350 to 400 plants as a sor­rel plant would give you about one to two pounds,” Je­bods­ingh fur­ther ex­plained.

His sor­rel is then sold on the re­tail mar­ket at $8 dol­lars per pound and $10 per pound with the seeds re­moved.

On whether he be­lieved this was ex­pen­sive com­pared to oth­er ven­dors sell­ing sor­rel at four pounds for $20, Je­bods­ingh, who is al­so a po­lice of­fi­cer, said, “Be­ing an agribusi­ness grad­u­ate from UWI, I un­der­stand the val­ue chain for the labour, the cost of chem­i­cals and trans­port.

“Most of these farm­ers when they want to sell the crop they are just look­ing for the im­me­di­ate cash. They don’t cal­cu­late all of the val­ue-added process­es be­hind this fi­nal prod­uct. I would have cal­cu­lat­ed all of my in­put costs and for me to get some kind of prof­it I can­not sell any­thing less than $6 per pound,” he ex­plained.

Per year, on av­er­age he in­vests be­tween $6,000 to $8,000 in his sor­rel crop.

This cost cov­ers two acres.

But it’s not just sor­rel alone that’s neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed by cli­mate change.

Agron­o­mist Mar­cus My­coo said rice pro­duc­tion has al­so been af­fect­ed by un­pre­dictable con­di­tions rang­ing from ex­treme heat to se­vere floods.

“It’s a lot more than sor­rel,” My­coo, the founder and chair­man of the Mar­Vista In­sti­tute for Agri­cul­tur­al Train­ing and De­vel­op­ment (MI­ATD) stressed.

“There are tech­nolo­gies to help farm­ers deal with fac­tors like flood­ing and heat and this is a train­ing is­sue...it is not just a mat­ter of plant and reap as most of us think it is,” he said.

On con­cerns by farm­ers that ex­po­sure to the tech­nolo­gies might be too ex­pen­sive, My­coo said while he un­der­stood this, train­ing is a ne­ces­si­ty not an op­tion.

“If this is your liveli­hood, what would you do? It is a de­fen­sive kind of think­ing we have with re­spect to agri­cul­ture and many oth­er things be­cause you think you have to get it free, but farm­ers have to put out al­so...If your ship is sink­ing, what will you do? You need to get the train­ing and knowl­edge,” My­coo main­tained.

Sor­rel is much more than for drink­ing.

The white and pink va­ri­eties of the pop­u­lar Christ­mas fruit are used to make a num­ber of prod­ucts rang­ing for hair­care and jel­lies and juices. This year, those va­ri­eties have been dif­fi­cult or al­most im­pos­si­ble to find.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Nat­ur­al Ar­ti­sans, Madon­na Roudett, who or­gan­is­es the an­nu­al Sor­rel Melee Fes­ti­val, de­scribed this year as a strug­gle for some ven­dors due to the scarci­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly of the white and pink va­ri­eties.

In fact, she said the date of the fes­ti­val, which start­ed in 2019, had to be changed from De­cem­ber 1 to De­cem­ber 8 be­cause sor­rel was com­ing in late this sea­son.

“I need­ed the sor­rel to do my soaps, which need a cer­tain amount of time to cure. This year, I had lim­it­ed soaps and my pro­duc­tion fell by 50 per cent com­pared to last year. I use all the vari­a­tions of sor­rel but this year I on­ly had the black sor­rel. Last year and the year be­fore we had sor­rel com­ing in Oc­to­ber.

“Al­so, we have a mem­ber who does chow chow but she can’t use the red be­cause it bleeds and it looks very strange so she us­es the white or the pink sor­rel but she has no chow chow this year be­cause of the un­avail­abil­i­ty.

“...There are some peo­ple who have not even start­ed pick­ing. I know one farmer who checks his plants every week and it is still not ready,” Roudett said.

She al­so agreed that the change in cli­mate is al­so af­fectin sor­rel pro­duc­tion say­ing, “Last year we had a mem­ber of the group who lost her en­tire crop. This year she did not both­er to plant be­cause she was not en­cour­aged.”

Roudett added that many peo­ple pre­ferred to plant the black sor­rel be­cause it is be­lieved it is more durable and can with­stand weath­er con­di­tions more.

“I would not say the black is in abun­dance but it can be found more than the red. The white you are not get­ting at all and the pink is ze­ro,” she added.

Sav­ing sor­rel

Mean­while, agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the wide range of con­sumer bev­er­ages found in su­per­mar­kets and oth­er re­tail stores par­al­lel the rise in culi­nary tourism across the world and in T&T.

Ma­haraj said the range of bev­er­ages is a re­flec­tion of evolv­ing tastes and in­creas­ing in­flu­ence of glob­al food and bev­er­age trends, which should be ob­served with­in the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion on food im­port de­pen­dence.

He not­ed the culi­nary land­scape in T&T has un­der­gone a sig­nif­i­cant trans­for­ma­tion in re­cent years, with rapid ex­pan­sion of in­no­v­a­tive menus and con­tem­po­rary cock­tails de­signed to cater to an in­creas­ing­ly di­verse and so­phis­ti­cat­ed clien­tèle, adding that restau­rants and bars now boast of­fer­ings in­spired by in­ter­na­tion­al trends, fea­tur­ing cre­ative mixol­o­gy and fu­sion cui­sine that show­case glob­al in­flu­ences.

While these de­vel­op­ments high­light the in­dus­try’s cre­ativ­i­ty and adapt­abil­i­ty, they have al­so in­ad­ver­tent­ly side­lined some tra­di­tion­al cul­tur­al sta­ples.

For ex­am­ple, Ma­haraj said bev­er­ages like the sor­rel drink, which are deeply root­ed in this coun­try’s culi­nary her­itage, are be­com­ing less com­mon in main­stream din­ing es­tab­lish­ments.

“The fo­cus on trendy in­gre­di­ents and ex­ot­ic pre­sen­ta­tions of­ten means that tra­di­tion­al drinks and dish­es strug­gle to find a place. This shift not on­ly re­flects chang­ing con­sumer pref­er­ences but al­so un­der­scores the need for a bal­ance be­tween em­brac­ing in­no­va­tion and pre­serv­ing our cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty. By reimag­in­ing and in­te­grat­ing lo­cal flavours like sor­rel in­to mod­ern culi­nary of­fer­ings, the in­dus­try can cel­e­brate tra­di­tion while keep­ing pace with evolv­ing trends,” he ad­vised.