Ma­ma's Green Gar­den has rev­o­lu­tionised the agri­cul­ture in­dus­try in Trinidad and To­ba­go through hy­dro­pon­ics. The prac­tice known as the grow­ing of plants with­out soil, in­stead us­es wa­ter and nu­tri­ents to ger­mi­nate plants.

Karim Baksh and his son Za­hir Baksh, for­mer en­gi­neers at Petrotrin, said their love for agri­cul­ture en­cour­aged them to delve in­to it. "I have al­ways had a pas­sion for agri­cul­ture; I start­ed prac­tis­ing it at a very young age," Karim at­test­ed. Pay­ing homage to his moth­er and moth­er-in–law whom he used to af­fec­tion­ate­ly called "Ma" and "Ma­ma," Karim de­cid­ed to name the com­pa­ny af­ter them since they in­tro­duced him to agri­cul­ture and shared his pas­sion for it. The fa­ther and son start­ed off as tra­di­tion­al farm­ers, plant­i­ng in their back­yard and sell­ing to the lo­cal mar­ket. All that changed, how­ev­er, when Karim read about the hy­dro­pon­ics prac­tice in the USA, and de­cid­ed to try his hand in it. "I start­ed off with five or six pipes try­ing all kinds of veg­eta­bles and ex­per­i­ment­ing, when we fi­nal­ly got it right, we stopped the tra­di­tion­al agri­cul­ture com­plete­ly and took this on." He stat­ed that, "Ma­ma's Green Gar­den was ham­mered out from the ar­rival of ex­pe­ri­ence."

The in­creas­ing de­mand for the high-qual­i­ty pro­duce en­cour­aged the farm­ers to ex­pand their busi­ness with the help of the Wendy Sam­sun­dar-Be­har­ry, man­ag­er of Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB). At present, Ma­ma's Green Gar­den spe­cialis­es in let­tuce, pak­choi and choy sum pak­choi and has two farms in Bar­rack­pore their home­town, with one span­ning 1,5000 square feet and the oth­er 60,000 square feet. Pro­duc­ing over 40,000 heads of let­tuce month­ly, they are one of the largest hy­dro­pon­ic farms in Trinidad and To­ba­go sup­ply­ing ma­jor su­per­mar­kets across the coun­try, such as Hi-Lo and Tru Valu and restau­rants in­clud­ing Shang­hai Ex­pe­ri­ence. They al­so have their own wa­ter sup­ply and stor­age sys­tem; how­ev­er, they re­main a fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed com­pa­ny. With a faster turnover, bet­ter con­trol of the plant, and most im­por­tant­ly or­gan­ic and health­i­er, Baksh said hy­dro­pon­ics is more prof­itable than tra­di­tion­al agri­cul­ture. "Hy­dro­pon­ics is giv­ing the plants what it needs mi­nus what it does not need," states Za­hir. When asked their recipe for suc­cess, Za­hir replied, "Qual­i­ty is what sets us apart, we are al­ways lead­ing the pack with our mar­ket­ing skills and our post har­vest­ing tech­niques.

"Our pack­ag­ing for ex­am­ple, we are the ones who start­ed plac­ing let­tuce in a clear plas­tic bag and putting a la­bel on it so the cus­tomers could iden­ti­fy with us. We even took it a step fur­ther and placed a bar­code on it." Al­though one of the largest hy­dro­pon­ic farms in the coun­try, the Baksh fam­i­ly has ex­pe­ri­enced some draw­backs, labour be­ing the biggest prob­lem. While they train and ed­u­cate farm­ers in this form of agri­cul­ture, the Bak­shs said they have time and time again bat­tled with labour prob­lems. With on­ly eight peo­ple em­ployed on the farms, they find it dif­fi­cult some­times to main­tain every­thing. They said the is­sue lies with the hes­i­tance of peo­ple to en­ter in­to the agri­cul­ture sec­tor and the stig­ma still at­tached to it. For the past cou­ple months the en­tre­pre­neurs have been try­ing to re­ceive elec­tric­i­ty for the ex­ten­sion of one of their farms but to no avail. They state, how­ev­er, that these draw­backs would not af­fect them as they will con­tin­ue to move for­ward. "We will al­ways be try­ing to im­prove and ex­pand," Za­hir said. Be­ing one of the largest hy­dro­pon­ic farms in the coun­try, he states that they have pi­o­neered the way for farm­ers and have be­come lead­ers in the in­dus­try. "Hy­dro­pon­ics is the so­lu­tion, it is sus­tain­able and or­gan­ic." He urges more farm­ers to get in­to the prac­tice since he views it as the so­lu­tion to food se­cu­ri­ty. "Any­one can get in­to it with the prop­er train­ing and you must have the pas­sion for agri­cul­ture" karim said. Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian, Sam­sun­dar-Be­har­ry said the high lev­el of ex­per­tise need­ed and ex­pe­ri­ence have been shown by the en­tre­pre­neurs. "In Ma­ma's Green Gar­den, you al­so see pas­sion and pur­pose and that's what dri­ves them for­ward."