The pro­duc­tion of milk in Trinidad and To­ba­go is chang­ing and Nes­tle is very proud of it.

The com­pa­ny pi­lot­ed a dairy de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme to en­sure the re­cov­ery and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the dairy in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The pro­gramme has two ma­jor goals; to in­crease farm ef­fi­cien­cy and an­nu­al fresh milk pro­duc­tion vol­ume by 30 per cent by 2025 while al­so re­duc­ing the car­bon im­pact of dairy farm­ing by 10,000 tonnes of CO2 by 2025.

As 2023 winds down, the com­pa­ny is boast­ing of sig­nif­i­cant progress.

“The ini­tia­tive, in fact, has been yield­ing very good re­sults. I mean, it’s still ear­ly stages. Ba­si­cal­ly what we have start­ed to do is re­al­ly about look at in­creas­ing milk pro­duc­tion,” said Nes­tle busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Richard See­taram in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day.

“But not just milk pro­duc­tion, not just vol­ume in­creas­es, but al­so from a very sus­tain­able way of how we man­age the farms as well. And then third­ly is about al­so look­ing at the type of cows, the type of an­i­mals that we have as well in the pro­gramme.

He ex­plained the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pro­gramme and the es­tab­lish­ment of a mod­el farm at Guaica, Tu­rure, has re­sult­ed in “very, very en­cour­ag­ing re­sults”.

“We have had an 11 per cent in­crease in vol­ume, an 11 per cent in­crease is as good as 100 tonnes an­nu­al­ly. So we have had growth. And then sec­ond­ly in terms of the green­house gas emis­sions, we have ac­tu­al­ly re­duced this by about 600 tonnes.”

Nes­tle es­tab­lished their mod­el farm at the Amoroso farm in Tu­rure, where the fam­i­ly has been con­tribut­ing to the com­pa­ny’s lo­cal milk pro­duc­tion since 1970.

“Be­ing sec­ond gen­er­a­tion farm­ers, we as chil­dren, three of us with mom be­ing re­tired, we would have tak­en on the man­date of farm­ing, con­tin­u­ing the farm, which be­gan with mom since 1970,” said farmer Gillian Amoroso-Ed­wards, “As tech­nol­o­gy ad­vanced, we al­so need­ed to ad­vance and help to mod­ernise the farm so that we could in­crease our yield and there­by came about the col­lab­o­ra­tion with Nes­tle Trinidad to do the mod­el farm project.”

Richard Seetaram

The col­lab­o­ra­tion has seen Nes­tle in­vest US$110,000 in the farm, which has re­sult­ed in im­prove­ments and up­grades. The in­vest­ments have in­clud­ed the in­stal­la­tion of sprin­klers, ad­vanced food pro­cess­ing as well as in new an­i­mal stock. The farm cur­rent­ly has 55 cows, with 20 cur­rent­ly milk­ing while oth­ers are ex­pect­ing new calves. It was Nes­tle’s first com­mis­sioned net ze­ro farm un­der the pro­gramme.

“We looked at how we can have the most ef­fi­cient man­age­ment of the farm. So for ex­am­ple, you have a cow that would pro­duce X amount of car­bon emis­sions. So the idea is to have high­er pro­duc­tion, high­er yield per cow. So you have less car­bon emis­sion, per an­i­mal or per cat­tle,” said See­taram, “So we have in­vest­ed in in­fra­struc­ture. When you see this it’s like we call it like a spa for the cows. So they are not 100 per cent graz­ing in the out­doors but they are ac­tu­al­ly in an area that is cov­ered.

“We have sprin­klers as well so we keep them cool, calm and very com­fort­able be­cause cows that are more com­fort­able pro­duce more. So that’s one el­e­ment.

“Sec­ond­ly, the feed or the nu­tri­tion of the an­i­mal is su­per im­por­tant in terms of the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­el that you get. So we have in­cor­po­rat­ed on that mod­el farm, a mix of grass, corn silage and some of the con­cen­trate or the feed sup­ple­ments as well. So we are re­duc­ing the de­pen­den­cy on the feed sup­ple­ments and hav­ing more or­gan­ic and nat­ur­al feed from the farm. So it’s ba­si­cal­ly be­com­ing more self-suf­fi­cient. And based on these three el­e­ments, we are able to get a high­er pro­duc­tion, a high­er yield per cow.”

The es­tab­lish­ment of such a project at a small farm, Nes­tle be­lieves, would help en­cour­age more small farm­ers to take the step to­wards such sus­tain­able prac­tices.

“Again this net ze­ro mod­el farm is a per­fect ex­am­ple in that it is re­al­ly help­ing farm­ers to see how their op­er­a­tion can be­come some­thing that is very fi­nan­cial­ly fea­si­ble and al­so sus­tain­able for the en­vi­ron­ment as well.

“So it’s not just in­creas­ing the pro­duc­tion but al­so in a very sus­tain­able and ef­fi­cient way. So this mod­el farm is our first. We are us­ing this like a bench­mark in terms of en­cour­ag­ing oth­er farm­ers to come on board be­cause it’s not a large farm. In fact, it’s a very small, fam­i­ly-op­er­at­ed farm,” See­taram said.

“We have many small­er farm­ers of this scale. And this is a per­fect ex­am­ple. It’s not a huge in­vest­ment or huge change in terms of their prac­tices to­day. There’s some ba­sic im­prove­ments that they have to in­cor­po­rate, but the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­el, the ef­fi­cien­cies that they can gen­er­ate as well can be very much a sus­tain­able busi­ness as well for the fu­ture.

The turn­around of the Tu­rure farm has im­pressed Amoroso-Ed­wards’ moth­er, Lucy Tor­res, who was par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased by the food prepa­ra­tion for the cows.

“At that time, we didn’t have all this thing to grind the corn, to feed the cows. We didn’t have that. You plant your grass and you cut and feed. And then the milk­ing. We do hand-milk­ing. But now it is dif­fer­ent,” said Tor­res, “Those drums that you see there when we have the corn, we cut it and you are putting the whole tree in the ma­chine there and every­thing will grind. And you put it with mo­lasses and salt. You mix and it will stay for a week or two and you feed the cows.”

Cows in shed at the Amoroso farm.

The farm­ers al­so con­firmed that the sci­en­tif­ic ap­proach has shown up in their re­turns.

“Let’s say for in­stance be­fore, with the breed that we had, be­fore we would get like half a buck­et of milk and now with the new feed­ing reg­i­ment, you can get some­thing like a buck­et to a buck­et and a quar­ter or there­about from the same an­i­mal us­ing the feed­ing reg­i­men that we now prac­tise on the mod­el farm,” said Amoroso-Ed­wards.

Nes­tle al­so con­firmed that it is al­so in talks with The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies to de­vel­op a sec­ond farm in part­ner­ship with the in­sti­tu­tion. In the long run, See­taram con­firmed that the pro­gramme was al­so aim­ing to make farm­ing at­trac­tive to the younger gen­er­a­tion.

“Yes, farm­ing is hard work. It re­quires a lot of ded­i­ca­tion. But if it’s man­aged in the right way, hav­ing the right ge­net­ics, in terms of the an­i­mals, hav­ing the right feed pro­gramme and al­so hav­ing the right con­di­tions for that farm. You can have this as a busi­ness. It can be very fi­nan­cial­ly fea­si­ble,” said See­taram.

The pro­gramme has al­so co­in­cid­ed with Nes­tle’s re­cent re­brand­ing of its milk prod­ucts on the lo­cal mar­ket.

“We have sig­nalled that com­mit­ment as well through the launch of our new Proud Land brand. So you would have seen it on the screen ear­li­er, but this is why we have re­brand­ed our milk from Nes­tle milk to Nes­tle Proud Land.

“And the rea­son for this is be­cause our milks are made here every day by Tri­ni hands, by Tri­ni cows, by Tri­ni farm­ers. Through the years we add val­ue to not just our prod­ucts, but to the so­ci­ety and to our con­sumers as well. Every step of the way. We have ex­per­tise in terms of in­ter­nal (aid) with our en­gi­neers, with new prod­uct de­vel­op­ment, and even with our re­tail­ers. So we add val­ue in every step of the way.

“And be­cause of this, we feel that we have earned the right to say that this is milk that is pro­duced here by Tri­ni hands every day, and that’s why we are proud and that’s why we call it proud land,” said See­taram.