Shal­iza Has­sanali

The Gov­ern­ment's trip to In­dia in Jan­u­ary has be­gun to reap re­wards for the agri­cul­ture sec­tor in T&T. On Fri­day, Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath at a lun­cheon at Carl­ton Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain wel­comed Dr Av­varu Su­jatha, prin­ci­pal sci­en­tist and head of the Man­go Re­search Unit from the Nuzvid Kr­ish­na dis­trict of In­dia to the coun­try.

For the next year, Su­jatha will as­sist in the con­trol of the Red Palm Mite pest af­fect­ing the dy­ing co­conut in­dus­try in T&T at no costs to the T&T Gov­ern­ment. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed by the In­di­an Coun­cil for Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search, Su­jatha who has spent 25 years of her life do­ing re­search on co­conut pests was salut­ed by In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Malay Mishra, the min­istry's per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Ed­wina Lea­cock and of­fi­cials from agri­cul­tur­al agen­cies.

A blush­ing Su­jatha promised not to let down the Gov­ern­ment in com­bat­ing the dis­ease. "I do will do my best," she as­sured. The dis­ease, which in­vad­ed T&T in 2006, has had dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects, with miles of co­conut es­tates in ar­eas such as Ce­dros, Ica­cos and Man­zanil­la be­ing wiped out in the last five years.

80 per cent co­conut in­dus­try wiped out

It is es­ti­mat­ed that be­tween 75 to 80 per cent of co­conut es­tates in T&T were de­stroyed. Fol­low­ing the lun­cheon, Bharath told the Sun­day Guardian that the Gov­ern­ment has reaped some mea­sure of suc­cess with its mis­sion to In­dia with Su­jatha's vis­it to T&T. "Her ser­vices, ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence are all free to the Gov­ern­ment."

The min­istry will pro­vide hous­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion for Su­jatha, Bharath said. Bharath said he was told by dis­ease con­trol agen­cies across the world that it may take as much as three to four years to fight the Red Palm Mite. Su­jatha, Bharath said, will un­der­take the task in one year.

De­vel­op­ing a bi­o­log­i­cal agent from scratch

Bharath said T&T could not sup­ply a bi­o­log­i­cal agent to coun­ter­act the dis­ease, stat­ing that one had to be de­vel­oped from scratch. Bharath said im­port­ing a bi­o­log­i­cal agent that may have worked else­where was risky since it could im­pact on our ex­ist­ing en­vi­ron­ment. By March 2013, Bharath said his min­istry ex­pects:

• A man­age­ment strat­e­gy on Red Palm Mite and an ac­tion plan.

• In­for­ma­tion pack­age on Red Palm Mite nat­ur­al en­e­mies.

• Use of bi­o­log­i­cal con­trol agents to erad­i­cate the dis­ease.

Once this has been ac­com­plished, Bharath said he will get the ball rolling to re­vi­talise the co­conut sec­tor by invit­ing the pri­vate sec­tor to in­vest. "What we are look­ing to do is get peo­ple from the pri­vate sec­tor to in­vest where there are prof­itable op­por­tu­ni­ties. We are say­ing we want en­tre­pre­neurs who may not be in­volved in agri­cul­ture right now to look at the agri­cul­ture sec­tor as any oth­er busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty."

Agri­cul­ture URP pro­gramme on board

Bharath said to get the in­dus­try up and run­ning, part of Ca­roni 1975 Ltd lands, com­pris­ing 40,000 acres can be used. Idle and bar­ren lands in the coun­try­side can al­so be sourced, Bharath said. Bharath said the co­conut in­dus­try can be­come vi­able with the right peo­ple sup­port­ing it.

He drew ref­er­ence to in­ter­na­tion­al soft drink man­u­fac­tur­er Pep­si Co­la which has been buy­ing up large co­conut es­tates in Brazil and South Amer­i­ca. "We can use this as an en­gine of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. We can now bot­tle and pack­age co­conut wa­ter in Trinidad and To­ba­go to ex­port, earn­ing triple times what the co­conut is worth sim­ply be­cause it's a nat­ur­al drink. All we need to do is find a way to pre­serve it. Clear­ly Pep­si Co­la has found a way to do it... oth­er­wise they would not have in­vest­ed so heav­i­ly."

Stat­ing that he was ex­treme­ly op­ti­mistic about the ini­tia­tive, Bharath said there are so many down­stream in­dus­tries than can be de­rived from the sec­tor. Dur­ing his trip to some of the rur­al ar­eas in In­dia, Bharath said he ob­served that every house­hold was us­ing co­conut to make some­thing to sell. Things such as mats, hats, slip­pers and hair­brush­es were made from the co­conut's fi­bre. The dried and fresh­ly cut leaves were used for a va­ri­ety of hand­i­crafts.

"Some­body who lives in rur­al Trinidad who wants to earn a liv­ing can sit down at home and make a few dol­lars." Bharath said while the in­dus­try was high­ly labour in­ten­sive, his min­istry was now look­ing at the agri­cul­ture URP pro­gramme to get on board to as­sist. "It is not just the jobs than can be de­rived... it is the in­come that can be gen­er­at­ed by the peo­ple who can be self em­ployed. We ex­pect that it will gen­er­ate thou­sands of jobs. But we have to start some­where and this is the start."

About the Red Palm Mite

The Red Palm Mite is a pest of the co­conut and oth­er palms in In­dia and many oth­er Asian coun­tries. The first West­ern Hemi­sphere re­port of Red Palm Mite was from Mar­tinique in 2004 and it quick­ly spread to many oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T in 2006. Ini­tial symp­toms are dis­col­oration of the leaves, while ad­vanced symp­toms in­clude yield loss.