Shal­iza Has­sanali

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4,000 jobs are ex­pect­ed to be cre­at­ed in the cas­sa­va in­dus­try next year as agri­cul­ture stake­hold­ers move to ramp up pro­duc­tion. The move is be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, The T&T Agri-Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­BA), the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, (UWI) The Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) and farm­ers, who held a meet­ing at the of­fice of the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co-op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture in St Au­gus­tine last Tues­day and rolled out their de­vel­op­men­tal plans for the vi­tal sta­ple. The ini­tia­tive, be­ing un­der­tak­en as a week of ac­tiv­i­ties, is sched­uled to kick off from De­cem­ber 13 to 18 to ed­u­cate and sen­si­tise the pub­lic about the ben­e­fits and po­ten­tial of cas­sa­va.

With 1,000 farm­ers cur­rent­ly in­volved in cas­sa­va cul­ti­va­tion, TTA­BA is op­ti­mistic that an ad­di­tion­al 4,000 peo­ple could land jobs in the sec­tor as they move to in­crease pro­duc­tion of the starchy root crop. Those who stand to ben­e­fit are farm­ers, pro­cess­ing plants, fac­to­ries, mar­ket­ing strate­gists, ven­dors and con­sumers. With a mere 1,500 acres of cas­sa­va un­der cul­ti­va­tion, Farouk Khan is mov­ing full speed ahead to in­crease this fig­ure to 15,000 acres in 2011. If every­thing goes ac­cord­ing to plan and once farms are ful­ly mech­a­nised, Khan said, the farm­ers could churn out be­tween three to five mil­lion pounds of the cas­sa­va with­in the next 12 months.

Tar­get­ing Ca­roni lands in South, Cen­tral

Not­ing that cas­sa­va is cul­ti­vat­ed in three ar­eas–east of Princes Town, Ca­paro and Rio Claro–TTA­BA's in­sti­tu­tion­al man­ag­er Al­lis­ter Glean said they were now tar­get­ing lands be­long­ing to for­mer Ca­roni 1975 Ltd work­ers in south and cen­tral Trinidad to reach the goals. Though Ca­roni lands are gen­er­al­ly mar­gin­al, Glean not­ed that cas­sa­va had the po­ten­tial to thrive in poor soil con­di­tions and droughts. "We are try­ing to bring the for­mer Ca­roni work­ers on board. The strat­e­gy is to at­tract these cane farm­ers to in­crease yields," said Glean.

In a bid to step up pro­duc­tion, Glean said, TTA­BA would make avail­able to all farm­ers a me­chan­i­cal planter and har­vester.

Train­ing in good agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices would al­so be of­fered to farm­ers. Glean said TTA­BA was in the process of bring­ing in high­er yield­ing va­ri­eties of cas­sa­va from Co­lum­bia to ramp up its out­put.

Glean said the pro­pos­als they planned to roll out had been tried and test­ed. "The plat­form is there and we are wait­ing to take off in 2011."

Es­tab­lish­ing a car­bo­hy­drate pro­cess­ing cen­tre

Anslem Wal­ters, se­nior man­ag­er of food pro­cess­ing at UTT, said the aim was to ob­tain ten per­cent of T&T's car­bo­hy­drate con­sump­tion with the cas­sa­va pro­duced lo­cal­ly. At present, UTT, Wal­ters said, was work­ing fever­ish­ly to es­tab­lish a car­bo­hy­drate pro­cess­ing cen­tre to pro­duce yam, sweet pota­to and cas­sa­va flours. Wheat flour re­tails at $2.50 per pound, while cas­sa­va flour is sold for be­tween $5 and $6 a pound. Ex­trud­ed prod­ucts such as corn flakes and snacks can al­so be had from cas­sa­va, Wal­ters said. The stake­hold­ers are al­so look­ing at man­u­fac­tur­ing an­i­mal feed from the cas­sa­va waste.

Dr Lyn­da Wick­ham, se­nior lec­tur­er in the de­part­ment of food pro­duc­tion in the Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Agri­cul­ture, said the stake­hold­ers want­ed to en­sure that cas­sa­va en­joyed its right­ful place. "With changes oc­cur­ing across the globe, es­pe­cial­ly with weath­er pat­terns and re­stric­tions on im­ports, we have to start putting things in place to en­sure there is food lat­er on, at least a car­bo­hy­drate sup­ply." Wick­ham said she felt the days would come when there would be mon­ey but we would not be able to im­port food.

"Peo­ple think we will sub­sti­tute cas­sa­va flour with wheat flour. There is no such thing. We will sub­sti­tute at cer­tain lev­els."

Wick­ham said the talk of cas­sa­va flour must be ac­com­pa­nied by the word com­pos­ite. Khan, how­ev­er, was quick to note that the min­istry had been un­der at­tack for its plans to man­u­fac­ture cas­sa­va flour in T&T. Many feel this will put us in the same po­si­tion as Guyana where wheat flour for ro­tis, breads, cakes and pas­tries had been cut. "We want to dis­pel this no­tion," Khan stat­ed.