GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Can co­coa be­come king once again in T&T?

Can the lo­cal co­conut in­dus­try re­turn to its glo­ry pro­duc­ing an abun­dance of nuts?

Can T&T re­ly on its rice in­dus­try for a steady sup­ply for cit­i­zens?

Plans for re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of these in­dus­tries were un­veiled by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion last Mon­day when he stat­ed "...we are pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary sup­port to boost pro­duc­tion in key sub­sec­tors in­clud­ing co­coa, live­stock, fish­eries, rice, cof­fee and co­conuts."

Stake­hold­ers had mixed mixed views on the min­is­ter's com­ment, as some be­lieved it was more talk than tan­gi­ble ac­tion while oth­ers wel­comed the pro­posed sup­port.

Ce­dros co­coa farmer Shankar Teelucks­ingh said lo­cal farm­ers pro­duce beans that are in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised. He be­moaned, how­ev­er, that there is is not on­ly in­suf­fi­cient land to plant co­coa, but al­so in­suf­fi­cient plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al.

Teelucks­ingh gets up to $60 a ki­lo for his beans, which are sold on the lo­cal mar­ket and to agents who have con­tracts in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. but be­lieves this fig­ure can be more giv­en his high qual­i­ty.

One of the fac­tors that con­tributed to the de­cline of the co­coa in­dus­try was Witch­es' Broom dis­ease. An­oth­er rea­son co­coa es­tates were aban­doned was due to the new econ­o­my that emerged in the coun­try, the “oil and gas in­dus­try.”

Ac­cord­ing to UWI archives, at the height of Trinidad's co­coa cul­ture in the mid to late 1800s, the coun­try is re­port­ed (1865) to have had 14,238 acres un­der co­coa and cof­fee, with over three mil­lion co­coa trees cul­ti­vat­ed by some 700 own­er/es­tates.

Trinidad pro­duced 20 per cent of the world’s co­coa, some 30,000 tonnes of beans at the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry, main­ly for ex­port through the co-op sys­tem.

To­day, T&T bare­ly pro­duces 500 tonnes.

How­ev­er, Path­manathan Uma­ha­ran, pro­fes­sor of ge­net­ics and di­rec­tor at the Co­coa Re­search Cen­tre at UWI, St Au­gus­tine said he is hope­ful as he said Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing the co­coa sec­tor in T&T, through the set­ting up of co­coa clus­ters, is wel­comed in the co­coa val­ue chain.

He not­ed that con­sid­er­able ef­fort has gone in­to map­ping the risks across the var­i­ous co­coa grow­ing com­mu­ni­ties by the Co­coa Re­search Cen­tre of UWI. This should, for the first time, al­low for the ap­pli­ca­tion of pre­ci­sion agri­cul­ture tech­nolo­gies to sup­port the ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly dis­trib­uted clus­ters in a more nu­anced way.

"Such tech­nolo­gies will al­so serve to not on­ly at­tract much need­ed in­vest­ment in­to co­coa com­mu­ni­ties but will al­so in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of farms. Set­ting up each of the clus­ters suc­cess­ful­ly will al­low faster adop­tion of tech­nolo­gies by oth­er farms with­in the clus­ter and will pave the way for all sup­port­ive agen­cies to work in uni­son in pro­vid­ing sup­port," Uma­ha­ran ex­plained.

While these ef­forts are laud­able, he ac­knowl­edged that cli­mate change and as­so­ci­at­ed changes are dis­rupt­ing the glob­al co­coa in­dus­tries with co­coa prices reach­ing un­prece­dent­ed lev­els. Uma­ha­ran not­ed that while pro­duc­tion in many tra­di­tion­al co­coa pro­duc­ing re­gions is fac­ing chal­lenges, oth­ers are emerg­ing to fill the short­age.

At the same time this dis­rup­tion Uma­ha­ran ad­vised, pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for coun­tries to re­cast their co­coa in­dus­tries in a more sus­tain­able foot­ing, not­ing that T&T sup­port­ed by the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion has tak­en im­por­tant steps to­wards reimag­in­ing the co­coa val­ue chain un­der the one-coun­try-one-com­mod­i­ty project and build­ing a green val­ue chain un­der an­oth­er project (BIORE­ACH).

Fur­ther, he said UWI’s In­ter­na­tion­al Fine Co­coa In­no­va­tion Cen­tre has set up a mod­el co­coa or­chard to show­case in­no­va­tions in co­coa pro­duc­tion and posthar­vest pro­cess­ing; and a pi­lot choco­late fac­to­ry that has sup­port­ed many emerg­ing lo­cal choco­latiers through pro­vi­sion of qual­i­ty cer­ti­fied in­ter­me­di­ary co­coa prod­ucts.

Can co­conut meet de­mands?

In May this year, con­sumers were forced to pay be­tween $12 and $15 for a co­conut from a road­side ven­dor.

Dur­ing that month the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries (MALF) ac­knowl­edged con­cerns of an on­go­ing co­conut short­age in the coun­try, not­ing that the in­dus­try faced sig­nif­i­cant threats from the co­conut wee­vil (rhyn­chopho­rus pal­marum), a pest linked to the dev­as­tat­ing red ring dis­ease.

How­ev­er, de­spite these chal­lenges, the fi­nance min­is­ter re­mained con­vinced there could be a resur­gence of the lo­cal co­conut in­dus­try.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian reached out to gen­er­al man­ag­er of Fat­Boy Co­conut Wa­ter, Mark Gomes, who rec­om­mend­ed spe­cif­ic ar­eas for con­tin­ued im­prove­ment and new sup­port from the gov­ern­ment. These in­clude land leas­es, grants, train­ing, in­fra­struc­ture as well as road and elec­tric­i­ty im­prove­ments, wa­ter man­age­ment and ac­cess and im­ple­ment­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

Gomes al­so ad­vised there should be in­no­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tion as he ex­plained, "man­dat­ing that co­conut wa­ter and pure wa­ter be the on­ly bev­er­ages avail­able in school feed­ing pro­grammes in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. This will sup­port the Health Min­istry's vi­sion of health­i­er chil­dren trans­lat­ing to health­i­er adults that im­pacts our bud­get for health­care in a pos­i­tive way with tan­gi­ble re­sults be­ing re­alised in less than a gen­er­a­tion–10 to 15 years."

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he called for uni­ty amongst co­conut farm­ers stat­ing that agreed qual­i­ty and sani­ti­sa­tion stan­dards, com­bined strate­gies to with­stand se­vere dry sea­sons, shared knowl­edge of im­prov­ing farm­ing and yield out­puts, alarm no­ti­fi­ca­tions if any pests or dis­eases are no­ticed, will­ing­ness to em­brace ad­vance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy in the in­dus­try and will­ing­ness to em­brace fi­nance plan­ning and se­cur­ing a fu­ture are nec­es­sary for suc­cess.

Not­ing that the com­pa­ny has been blessed with un­lock­ing a suc­cess­ful sup­ply chain to bring 100 per cent pure co­conut wa­ter to the world, Gomes said each week Fat­Boy re­quires at least 40,000 co­conuts with a min­i­mum yield of 300ml per co­conut (most co­conuts eas­i­ly pro­duce 330ml as a stan­dard mea­sure).

"We be­lieve that we can in­crease this to 60,000 in six months as we have not ac­tive­ly pressed to break in­to new mar­kets the past four years. If the Fi­nance Min­is­ter can cre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment where Fat­boy can eas­i­ly source 60,000 av­er­age co­conuts per week, we can an­swer one half of the equa­tion in a sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el with re­gards to the de­mand. This fig­ure of 60,000 co­conuts is Fat Boy de­mand alone – I can es­ti­mate with­out ev­i­dence that the com­bined de­mand week­ly of all co­conut wa­ter bot­tlers in the coun­try is at least 100,000 co­conuts each week," he added.

T&T's plate of food

While rice is an im­por­tant sta­ple for the lo­cal palette, it takes more than that to make up an av­er­age plate of food.

What about ground pro­vi­sions and de­vel­op­ing this sec­tor to guar­an­tee food se­cu­ri­ty, asked for­mer dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Agri­cul­ture Dr Wayne Gan­pat.

Not­ing there has been some progress by gov­ern­ment on the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the rice in­dus­try, Gan­pat how­ev­er said, "We want to pro­duce at least half of the rice we con­sume. Present­ly we im­port 90 or more per cent of rice from Guyana and oth­er places. There are ef­forts to pro­duce rice pro­duc­tion in the short term but that would be in a year or two be­cause you have to get farm­ers on board, you have to get sub­si­dies, you have to get the mill in op­er­a­tion."

On a broad­er scale Gan­pat ad­vised that a plate of food must al­so con­sist of car­bo­hy­drates, pro­tein and veg­eta­bles.

'We can't eat rice every day so we need to have root crops and there must be ded­i­cat­ed ef­forts to ramp up pro­duc­tion of this. What about out live­stock, our in­dige­nous live­stock? Sheep and goat? What we do well, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in To­ba­go, so that is the pro­tein. We have to ramp up that to have that on our plate," Gan­pat out­lined.

In 1992, the coun­try pro­duced 21,200 met­ric tonnes of rice, com­pared to the 585 met­ric tonnes har­vest­ed in 2018.

This fig­ure was pro­vid­ed by Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) in a 2019 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee hear­ing.

To­day, rice pro­duc­tion has reached its low­est in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, with 15 farm­ers strug­gling to re­sus­ci­tate the in­dus­try.

Rice farmer Richard Singh be­lieves ris­ing fer­tilis­er prices, high cost of pro­duc­tion, low yields, un­avail­abil­i­ty of seeds, and lack of po­lit­i­cal will have led some farm­ers to aban­don the crop.