T&T’s co­coa con­tin­ues to shine on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage as yet again lo­cal farm­ers have so­lid­i­fied a place among the elite of co­coa grow­ers.

At the 2023 Ca­cao of Ex­cel­lence Awards which took place on Feb­ru­ary 8 in Am­s­ter­dam, Shankar Teelucks­ingh of Granville, Doolar­ie Ram­dath of Rio Claro and Stephanie Omardeen of Bras­so Seco all copped sil­ver in the cat­e­go­ry of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

The cer­e­mo­ny took place at the Beurs Van Berlage in the heart of Am­s­ter­dam at the Co­coa Trade Fair, dur­ing the Am­s­ter­dam Co­coa and Choco­late week.

The Ca­cao of Ex­cel­lence recog­nis­es qual­i­ty, flavour and di­ver­si­ty of co­coa beans from ori­gins around the world.

The gold cat­e­go­ry was won by Cos­ta Ri­ca—Choco­lat­era del Vol­cán; El Sal­vador—Rafael Moisés Ochoa Pin­to; Ja­maica—Pure Choco­late Ja­maica and Body Es­tate and Mar­tinique —Val­ca­co - Jean Michel Marie.

Teelucks­ingh, Omardeen and Ram­dath shared their thoughts with Sun­day Busi­ness as well as in­sights in­to the lo­cal co­coa sec­tor.

In the case of Teelucks­ingh, he has a rich her­itage, be­gin­ning with a fam­i­ly co­coa es­tate of his great grand­par­ents which was lat­er passed on.

“When we took over, there was a down­turn in the sec­tor where there was a short­age in labour and oth­er in­dus­try-re­lat­ed is­sues. But we pushed through. Around that time Petrotrin, where I worked, closed and I de­cid­ed to re­ha­bil­i­tate the es­tate, as I saw it as an ex­cit­ing ven­ture and a way to con­tin­ue the lega­cy of my fore­fa­thers while earn­ing a sec­ond in­come,” he shared.

The award-win­ning beans pro­duced from his es­tate are turned in­to home-made co­coa, us­ing a fam­i­ly recipe dat­ing back to Teelucks­ingh’s great grand­par­ents.

His es­tate pro­duces ap­prox­i­mate­ly 350 kilo­grammes every quar­ter and with­in the next six months to a year, Teelucks­ingh hopes to dou­ble or triple pro­duc­tion per quar­ter.

He al­so plans to ex­pand in­to oth­er co­coa prod­ucts like co­coa liquor, co­coa essence and is al­so cur­rent­ly re­search­ing an of­fer­ing of co­coa tea bag recipe. He plans to take this prod­uct to the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el, if giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

“We would like to al­so tar­get the Eu­ro­pean Union as some of our beans are al­ready shipped to Bel­gium and even Japan, once fund­ing al­lows.

“Our co­coa beans are al­so avail­able to lo­cal choco­latemak­ers through­out T&T. Sales for our beans have been go­ing well so far. We even no­tice that since win­ning sliv­er, the de­mand for co­coa beans from the gen­er­al Ce­dros area has in­creased and farm­ers, in­clud­ing my­self, have been able to fetch a bet­ter price, which is en­cour­ag­ing,” Teelucks­ingh added.

Beam­ing about his award, Teelucks­ingh said this was not some­thing he ex­pect­ed, but it gave him an im­mense sense of pride to not on­ly rep­re­sent his coun­try but al­so to ho­n­our the hard work his fam­i­ly (past and cur­rent gen­er­a­tions) have put in­to the es­tate.

Mean­while, Ram­dath whose es­tate is at Ec­clesville, Rio Claro, has been ac­tive in the co­coa busi­ness for the past sev­en years with her broth­er.

How­ev­er, both have been as­sist­ing their fa­ther since child­hood; har­vest­ing and pro­cess­ing co­coa beans the tra­di­tion­al way which brought about Ram­dath’s love for the in­dus­try.

Out­side of co­coa bean pro­duc­tion, the es­tate al­so pro­duces tra­di­tion­al grat­ing (drink­ing) choco­lates and is cur­rent­ly in the tri­al-and-er­ror stage of pro­duc­ing co­coa wine and choco­late bars, which she hopes to im­prove to make avail­able on the lo­cal mar­ket soon.

Ram­dath’s co­coa prod­ucts are cur­rent­ly sold to its neigh­bours, fam­i­ly and friends, hav­ing a small scale of pro­duc­tion for val­ue-added prod­ucts.

How­ev­er, in the fu­ture she is hop­ing to get in­to the in­ter­na­tion­al/re­gion­al sphere specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing the US and UK.

In the mean­time, by or­ders on­ly, Ram­dath does small batch­es.

“Sales have been pick­ing up as we im­prove on our prod­ucts. Now that we have won sliv­er in this in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion, we hope that we can use this as a mar­ket­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to high­light our prod­ucts,” she said.

Al­so do­ing T&T proud was Omardeen, along with her son Javed, of Omar­beans Or­gan­ics lo­cat­ed at Tinamou and Lit­tle Her­mit Es­tate in Bras­so Seco, Paria who have been farm­ing for about 10 years.

De­clar­ing their “love of the land and na­ture,” they have been pro­duc­ing co­coa for sale for about six years.

“Our es­tates were al­ready plant­ed with co­coa and cof­fee, fruit and in­dige­nous trees when we ac­quired them. We re­alised that co­coa, as an un­der­sto­ry crop, is ide­al­ly suit­ed to sus­tain­able, re­gen­er­a­tive farm­ing which is im­por­tant to us and this mo­ti­vat­ed us to re­ha­bil­i­tate the co­coa and al­so cof­fee,” Omardeen said, ex­plain­ing the im­pe­tus for get­ting in­to co­coa cul­ti­va­tion.

The es­tate makes a range of prod­ucts in­clud­ing co­coa nibs, co­coa pow­der, and a va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent types of choco­late in­clud­ing plain as well as in­cor­po­rat­ing lo­cal spices and fruits such as guinea pep­per, gin­ger, cof­fee, co­conut, sor­rel, hog plum, or­ange and mint.

These items are cur­rent­ly on­ly sold lo­cal­ly to a niche mar­ket.

On their plans for ex­pan­sion, the Omardeens said, “Our aim is to in­crease our pro­duc­tion and qual­i­ty through mak­ing our land re­silient and soils healthy. We per­son­al­ly feel that be­fore even talk­ing about ex­port, we need to make sure that we, as a coun­try, can pro­duce a con­sis­tent and re­li­able sup­ply of co­coa. Trinidad is def­i­nite­ly not there yet.”

How­ev­er, they not­ed that lo­cal sales have been con­sis­tent, stat­ing that they pre­fer to sell di­rect­ly as in­ter­act­ing with clients of­ten re­sults in a con­nec­tion to the prod­ucts.

“It is re­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing to see the pos­i­tive re­ac­tion of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans when they taste lo­cal choco­late and com­pare it to mass pro­duced choco­late (which should be prop­er­ly called can­dy not choco­late). More and more Trinida­di­ans are learn­ing to ap­pre­ci­ate lo­cal choco­late prod­ucts,” they added.

While this is pos­i­tive for farm­ers and, by ex­ten­sion, the in­dus­try, the Omardeens, like oth­er farm­ers, ac­knowl­edged there are many chal­lenges fac­ing co­coa farm­ers in Trinidad.

They iden­ti­fied ex­treme­ly poor roads, lack of labour and in­suf­fi­cient ma­te­ri­als for plant­i­ng new es­tates as ma­jor im­ped­i­ments fac­ing the sec­tor.

Added to which there are al­so ex­treme cli­mate events, like El Niño and La Niña which have ex­ac­er­bat­ed co­coa dis­eases and loss of co­coa to an­i­mals such as par­rots and squir­rels.