Shal­iza Has­sanali

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Agri-Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­BA) wants to un­der­take a 100-acre sweet corn project in Plum Mi­tan. If the project gets off the ground, TTA­BA is op­ti­mistic that more than 200 on-the-job farm trainees can be re­tained and more than 40 farm­ing jobs cre­at­ed.

It al­so has the po­ten­tial to grad­u­al­ly re­duce the coun­try's $4 bil­lion food im­port bill an­nu­al­ly. T&T im­ports close to $2 mil­lion in sweet corn, which is nat­u­ral­ly low in calo­ries and high in ben­e­fi­cial fi­bres, vi­t­a­mins and min­er­als. The im­port­ed corn is canned and pack­aged in tight­ly sealed bags to be sold at su­per­mar­kets, and is served in restau­rants.

Re­gard­ed as the most pop­u­lar veg­etable be­cause of its sweet flavour, sweet corn is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from field corn or pi­o­neer corn, which T&T's cit­i­zens de­vour when boiled, roast­ed or served in soup. Pi­o­neer is the most com­mon type of corn grown and eat­en in Trinidad. The biggest pro­duc­ers of sweet corn are Unit­ed States, Chi­na, Brazil, Mex­i­co, In­done­sia, In­dia, France and Ar­genti­na.

More than 800 mil­lion tonnes was grown world­wide in 2009, which is more than rice at 678 mil­lion tonnes. A year ago, TTA­BA be­gan util­is­ing the ex­per­tise of farm­ers Am­ran Ali, Hakim Mowlah, 48, and his 24-year-old son Jameel in a three-acre sweet corn pi­lot project at Block Four, Plum Mi­tan. Mowlah is pres­i­dent of the Plum Mi­tan/Biche Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion.

Form­ing part­ner­ships

Farouk Shah, TTA­BA's man­ag­er of pro­cure­ment and pro­duc­tion, has de­scribed the part­ner­ship with Mowlah and the two oth­ers as a re­sound­ing suc­cess. TTA­BA now wants to form a part­ner­ship with farm­ers in the far-flung com­mu­ni­ty to ramp up pro­duc­tion to 100 acres in the com­ing months, since they feel the crop can be grown on a large scale with a sur­plus to ex­port re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

The Plum Mi­tan/Biche Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion has a mem­ber­ship of over 200 farm­ers. Shah said the corn have al­ready been sam­pled by tourists and corn lovers in Bar­ba­dos and Mar­tinique, where it re­ceived a thumbs up. "It's be­com­ing a high­ly sought af­ter veg­etable in the Caribbean. Peo­ple are now ac­quir­ing a taste for the grain," Shah said.

Farm­ers are paid a guar­an­teed price of $3.25 per pound for Grade A sweet corn, while Grade C is pur­chased at $1.75 by TTA­BA. Though the farm­ers were faced with chal­lenges, main­ly for wa­ter, which sweet corn needs a lot of to flour­ish, they in­vest­ed in an ir­ri­ga­tion pond, pumps and drip hoses to bring the es­sen­tial el­e­ments to their crops. "We know we could not fail in this ven­ture. We had to prove our­selves, so we went all out," Mowlah said.

School Feed­ing Pro­gramme ben­e­fits

The last crop which was har­vest­ed in the first week in Sep­tem­ber was sent to the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme (SFP) by TTA­BA. "This was served as a side dish to hun­dreds of pupils and stu­dents. Right now we can­not sup­ply the re­quired amount to the pro­gramme," Shah said.

The SFP has re­quest­ed two tonnes of corn per week, which TTA­BA is un­able to de­liv­er un­til pro­duc­tion is in­creased. "Cur­rent­ly de­mand is out­weigh­ing sup­ply. What we need to do is in­crease the acreage so we will have enough to sup­ply the school pop­u­la­tion, restau­rants, ho­tels, su­per­mar­kets and mar­kets."

Some of the corn pro­duced by the farm­ers were blanched, pack­aged and put on the shelves of su­per­mar­kets by TTA­BA. Shah said what they need be­fore they ven­ture in­to the 100-acre project was a chill room to store the corn at the right tem­per­a­ture af­ter reap­ing.

"Fluc­tu­a­tion in tem­per­a­ture can take away the corn's sweet­ness which we need to main­tain. This crop is high­ly per­ish­able so a chill room is of ut­most im­por­tance." Sec­re­tary of the as­so­ci­a­tion, Han­sraj Ram­lal said they would al­so need a pack­ing house, sim­i­lar to what NAMDE­V­CO has at Pi­ar­co, which of­fers tem­po­rary stor­age, pro­cess­ing and pack­ag­ing to en­sure the qual­i­ty of the pro­duce is main­tained.

Shah said while the corn was har­vest­ed and husked man­u­al­ly, this was time con­sum­ing for farm­ers who need­ed to fo­cus on high yields and de­liv­er­ing on time. "We have looked at a har­vest­ing and husk­ing ma­chine priced at US$70,000 to ease their work­load," Shah ex­plained.

Re­cent­ly TTA­BA pur­chased two out­door so­lar pest trap de­vices from Chi­na, which would sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion and main­tain the eco­log­i­cal bal­ance in the fields. "We are try­ing to put every­thing in place for a smooth flow."

The el­der Mowlah cred­it­ed his bumper har­vest to TTA­BA's field of­fi­cer, Daryl Ram­per­sad who im­part­ed his bi­o­log­i­cal con­trol meth­ods. Self­less sac­ri­fices Shah ex­plained that days be­fore the project got un­der­way, Jameel was of­fered a part-time work with Petrotrin, which he turned down.

Two weeks of work would have earned Jameel thou­sands of dol­lars, but he chose to ral­ly with his fa­ther who had a prob­lem sourc­ing labour. "See­ing that the crop is high­ly labour in­ten­sive and labour was hard to come by, Jameel opt­ed to come on board. It was a self­less sac­ri­fice," Mowlah said.

Six­ty days af­ter plant­i­ng his first crop, Mowlah was able to reap two tonnes of the pro­duce. The three oth­er crops were just as good or even bet­ter, Mowlah boast­ed, prompt­ing oth­er farm­ers to ex­press an in­ter­est in com­ing on board with TTA­BA. Ob­tain­ing land for the project, Mowlah said, will not be a prob­lem since there is 1,200 acres of state land at their dis­pos­al.

"Some of the lands have al­ready been leased to farm­ers by the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, while oth­ers are go­ing to waste. We should be util­is­ing every avail­able space to be­come more suf­fi­cient in food," he point­ed out.