The steel in­dus­try may have fall­en but one of T&T's main play­ers in the in­dus­try, Kamp­ta Per­saud, is now now mak­ing his mark in the pro­duc­tion of fine-flavoured co­coa beans.

Per­saud, who is the CEO of Var­ma Iron & Steel Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed, is best known in T&T for pro­vid­ing steel prod­ucts. What most peo­ple don't know is Per­saud has at­tained in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion for pro­duc­ing some of the best co­coa beans in the world.

Last Oc­to­ber, Per­sad, his daugh­ter Kailash Win­klaar and her hus­band Quin­cy Win­klaar won an in­ter­na­tion­al co­coa award from the Co­coa of Ex­cel­lence Pro­gramme for an out­stand­ing sam­ple of co­coa they pro­duced. They were pre­sent­ed with the award at the Sa­lon Du Choco­lat, a year­ly choco­late trade fair held in Paris, France.

In an in­ter­view, Per­sad said he want­ed to re­store co­coa to its for­mer glo­ry. Ex­press­ing his ela­tion af­ter win­ning the award, Per­sad said it was the first time that his com­pa­ny en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion.

"The com­pe­ti­tion is held every two years. We sub­mit­ted our sam­ples to the Co­coa Re­search Cen­tre of UWI, St Au­gus­tine and the sam­ples were sent to Paris to be test­ed through the Co­coa of Ex­cel­lence (Co­Ex) Pro­gramme," Per­sad said.

A to­tal of 146 sam­ples of co­coa beans from 35 coun­tries were en­tered.

"Fifty of those were cho­sen to be processed in­to choco­late by 26 pro­fes­sion­al choco­latiers. From those 50, 17 fi­nal­ists were cho­sen to re­ceive an award," said Per­saud.

With the award giv­ing him even more mo­ti­va­tion, Per­saud said he hoped co­coa pro­duc­tion could boost T&T's un­sta­ble econ­o­my.

"Co­coa is very hard work and we have a cul­ture that sees any­thing to do with work­ing hard or work­ing with­in a field as in­fe­ri­or. Co­coa is in our DNA. We have the cap­i­tal, knowl­edge, his­to­ry and the lands, but we do not have things in place to en­sure that. We as Trinida­di­ans should be proud, as our coun­try is fa­mous for one of the three types of co­coa–Criol­lo, Foras­tero and Trini­tario–the Trini­tario be­ing a hy­brid of the oth­er two," he said.

Re­call­ing the days of mi­grant labour, Per­saud said it has al­ways ex­ist­ed in the co­coa in­dus­try of T&T.

"First, the planters used Amerindi­an labour and lat­er African slaves. When slav­ery was abol­ished, in­den­tured In­di­an labour was used on the plan­ta­tions. It was af­ter the end of this that (co­coa de­clined), due to first­ly a lack of labour and sec­ond­ly the col­lapse of prices," he said.

Draw­ing ref­er­ence to Ecuador, Per­saud made men­tion of how peo­ple from Venezuela, Bo­livia and Brazil were go­ing over to work in the fields. This has caused Ecuador to be in the run­ning for the 4th largest co­coa bean pro­duc­er in the world by 2016.

"We have lo­cals from here go­ing to Cana­da and the Unit­ed States to work in the fields pick­ing ap­ples and grapes. Now why is this? It is be­cause once they are not seen by those they deem "im­por­tant", it is fine. So if we are go­ing to those coun­tries, why can't we bring in those who are will­ing to work to our shores?" Per­saud said.

He boast­ed that T&T was the world's third high­est pro­duc­er of co­coa, af­ter Venezuela and Ecuador, pro­duc­ing 20 per cent or 35,000 tonnes of the world's co­coa in 1830.

"To­day our pro­duc­tion stands at a mea­gre 400 tonnes. Since pur­chas­ing the es­tate in 2003, our goal is to, by 2018, pro­duce 800 tonnes of beans and by 2020 pro­duce 2,000 tonnes."

The San Juan Es­tate, lo­cat­ed on the "Choco­late Soils" re­gion of the Mon­ser­rat Hills in Gran Cou­va, is the largest and old­est co­coa es­tate in Trinidad.

The es­tate, com­pris­ing 1,000 acres, was es­tab­lished in 1880 by French Cor­si­can im­mi­grant to Trinidad, Fran­cois Agos­ti­ni and has op­er­at­ed con­tin­u­ous­ly ever since. In 2003, the es­tate changed hands and now op­er­ates un­der Hen­delschaft Agri­cul­tur­al Hold­ings Ltd.

"Ini­tial­ly, the land was bought to be used as a place to build a home. How­ev­er, af­ter see­ing how much his­to­ry that the lands have, we de­cid­ed to al­low the lega­cy to live on. Cur­rent­ly we em­ploy 40 work­ers, all of whom are a bit old­er, but they have a his­to­ry or lega­cy with the es­tate. They know the prop­er process­es that come with co­coa pro­duc­tion," Per­saud said.

The T&T Guardian was treat­ed to a mi­ni-tour of the es­tate by Kailash and Quin­cy. The es­tate con­trast­ed the past and fu­ture as build­ings were un­der con­struc­tion to re­place some of the oth­ers, worn down from the times. Small cot­tages are pro­vid­ed for work­ers of the es­tate if they re­quest­ed one.

"It makes more sense for them to stay on the es­tate. It is some­what out of the way and we make it ac­ces­si­ble to them to not wor­ry about get­ting to work in the morn­ing," said Kailash.

The cou­ple has al­so de­cid­ed to live on the es­tate and are in the process of con­struct­ing their home there. The home is to be com­plet­ed with a lab­o­ra­to­ry for their own re­search in­to co­coa. While tra­vers­ing through the es­tate, they spoke about some of the prob­lems they have faced, point­ing out the af­ter­math of in­ten­tion­al­ly-set fires to dif­fer­ent ar­eas, and one area where a small fire was still burn­ing.

"We give some­one the task of check­ing around every 24 hours. They are usu­al­ly equipped with back­pack wa­ter spray cans and if the blaze gets too se­ri­ous, we are forced to use buck­ets filled with wa­ter car­ried by a pick-up truck. It's all in ef­fort to save a lega­cy," said Kailash.

"Ex­cel­lence is a habit and we plan on con­tin­u­ing to pro­vide an ex­cep­tion­al qual­i­ty of co­coa for as long as we can," she added.

While many oth­er farm­ers have strug­gled with mar­ket­ing their co­coa, Per­saud and his fam­i­ly have been able to suc­cess­ful­ly ex­port the crop. Last week, farm­ers from the Siparia and Erin re­gions called on Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat to op­er­a­tionalise the Co­coa De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, say­ing thou­sands of co­coa beans are rot­ting in the fields. The min­is­ter has been hold­ing dis­cus­sions with the co­coa farm­ers to boost co­coa pro­duc­tion and ex­port.

KEVON MA­HARAJ