Shal­iza Has­sanali

Farmer Dhru­patee Shantie Soogrim broke the glass ceil­ing last Fri­day, walk­ing off with a first prize of $150,000 in the pres­ti­gious Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al En­tre­pre­neurs' Com­pe­ti­tion. The $150,000 was part of a stag­ger­ing $2 mil­lion in prize mon­ey pre­sent­ed to farm­ers by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture on Fri­day last at Hilton Trinidad, Port-of-Spain. Soogrim al­so earned $40,000 as one of ten fi­nal­ists in the con­test and an ad­di­tion­al $8,000 for com­ing out tops in the nurs­ery pro­duc­tion/plant pro­duc­tion cat­e­go­ry in Coun­ty St Patrick East, tak­ing home a to­tal of $198,000. Of the ten fi­nal­ists, Soogrim was the on­ly fe­male of the lot, beat­ing favourite Anil Ram­nar­ine, who cap­tured both the veg­etable and food­crop cat­e­gories. The min­istry re­ceived a to­tal of 416 en­tries. The 50-year-old farmer was recog­nised for her agri-busi­ness ven­ture in Pe­nal, which has blos­somed in­to a 4,000 seedling tray en­ter­prise, in­volv­ing strin­gent san­i­ta­tion mea­sures, bi­o­log­i­cal spray pro­gramme and nat­ur­al plant hor­mones.

"I feel proud not on­ly for my­self but for all women," said a proud Soogrim min­utes af­ter re­ceiv­ing her chal­lenge tro­phy from Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Arnold Pig­gott. Pig­gott, in de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, praised farm­ers for their valu­able con­tri­bu­tion, stat­ing that agri­cul­ture will no doubt help di­ver­si­fy T&T's econ­o­my. "The agri­cul­ture sec­tor has a dif­fi­cult role to play as we move from agri­cul­ture to agri-busi­ness," said Pig­gott. He al­so urged farm­ers to spend the $2 mil­lion wise­ly. "Women are now ris­ing to the top and tak­ing over po­si­tions that were once dom­i­nat­ed by men. It shows that there is noth­ing we can't do," Soogrim said. "We are break­ing the glass ceil­ing." Soogrim in­tends to in­vest her win­nings on a pre­ci­sion nee­dle seed­er, which costs US$50,000. Hav­ing al­ready made a down-pay­ment of US$20,000 on the equip­ment, Soogrim will leave this week to pay off for the item which will be shipped in a 20-foot con­tain­er to Trinidad. The com­pe­ti­tion which be­gan in 2006 is metic­u­lous­ly planned to cre­ate op­ti­mum na­tion­al aware­ness and in­volve­ment with three months in­ten­sive judg­ing at farms.