Rur­al farm­ers and farm­ing have re­ceived a ma­jor boost with the open­ing of the Brazil Vil­lage Farm­ers Group Agro-Pro­cess­ing and Pack­ag­ing Fa­cil­i­ty at Brazil Lome Trace, Brazil Vil­lage, on Wednes­day 21 Feb­ru­ary 2024.

The ini­tia­tive was made pos­si­ble through a grant of TT$100,000 from the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion and Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go, un­der their EPIC Pro­gramme—Ex­tra­or­di­nary Projects Im­pact­ing Com­mu­ni­ties.

“We want farm­ers to be part of the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion and to help them im­prove their qual­i­ty of life,” ex­plained Ran­dell Pat­ter­son, Pres­i­dent of the Brazil Vil­lage Farm­ers Group.

The Group has a mem­ber­ship of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 farm­ers, and its pri­ma­ry goal is to as­sist rur­al farm­ers in achiev­ing a de­cent qual­i­ty of life and to pro­mote agri­cul­ture as a vi­able pro­fes­sion for youth in the com­mu­ni­ty.

The new fa­cil­i­ty was es­tab­lished to process lo­cal­ly grown, fresh pro­duce in­to val­ue-added prod­ucts, pro­vid­ing pro­cess­ing, pack­ag­ing and mar­ket­ing ser­vices to farm­ers who were pre­vi­ous­ly un­able to ac­cess these ser­vices.

Randell Patterson, President of the Brazil Village Farmers Group, takes officials on a tour of the new Agro-Processing and Packaging Facility located at Brazil Lome Trace. [Image courtesy Digicel Foundation]

A re­lease from the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion notes that the EPIC fund­ing was used to con­struct the build­ing, in­clud­ing elec­tri­cal, plumb­ing and drainage works, and to pur­chase nec­es­sary equip­ment and ap­pli­ances such as a chiller, stain­less steel ta­bles and sinks, uten­sils, scales, PPE and Seal­ers. The Brazil Vil­lage Farm­ers Group con­tributed an ad­di­tion­al TT$97,000 in cash to com­plete con­struc­tion and to lead a se­ries of sen­si­ti­sa­tion work­shops and con­sul­ta­tions with farm­ers.

Speak­ing at the launch of the fa­cil­i­ty, Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion Board Mem­ber, Guy Small, was high in com­men­da­tion of the Brazil Vil­lage Farm­ers Group’s ef­forts.

“The EPIC grant pro­gramme was de­signed to em­pow­er or­gan­i­sa­tions to mo­bilise part­ner­ships and trans­form their com­mu­ni­ty spaces, and the Brazil Vil­lage Farm­ers Group has done this with ex­tra­or­di­nary suc­cess. The cal­i­bre of man­age­ment, ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy that this NGO part­ner has dis­played is every fun­der’s dream,” he said.

Gi­na Ram­cha­ran, En­vi­ron­men­tal and As­sur­ance Lead at Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go, echoed Guy Small’s en­thu­si­asm for the project.

“This fa­cil­i­ty gives the farm­ers of Brazil Vil­lage the op­por­tu­ni­ty to not on­ly im­prove their busi­ness mod­els,” she point­ed out, “but to con­tribute in an even big­ger way to the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of their com­mu­ni­ty and the coun­try.”

Farook Hosein, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries (far right), and Minister Foster Cummings, MP for La Horquetta/Talparo Constituency (3rd from right), join representatives from The Digicel Foundation, Shell Trinidad and Tobago and The Brazil Village Farmers Group to launch the new Agro Processing and Packaging Facility at Brazil Lome Trace on Wednesday 21 February 2024. [Image courtesy Digicel Foundation]

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Fa­rook Ho­sein, ful­ly en­dorsed the ini­tia­tive dur­ing his spe­cial re­marks at the launch.

“The Brazil Vil­lage Farm­ers Group has demon­strat­ed the im­pact of uni­ty and strate­gic plan­ning to achieve sus­tain­able growth and un­lock new op­por­tu­ni­ties for our farm­ers,” he stat­ed. “The for­ma­tion of as­so­ci­a­tions like yours is a cor­ner­stone in our col­lec­tive ef­forts to en­hance the agri­cul­tur­al land­scape of our na­tion.”

The Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion launched EPIC in 2016 as a small grants’ ini­tia­tive, and it has con­tin­u­ous­ly grown in scale and im­pact since then.

Through part­ner­ship with Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go, the 2023-2024 EPIC pro­gramme of­fered 10 com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions an en­hanced TT$100,000 grant to im­ple­ment sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives in the ar­eas of re­new­able en­er­gy, agri­cul­ture, and the en­vi­ron­ment.