For years, Cor­pus Christi has been re­gard­ed as the ide­al time for farm­ers and home gar­den­ers to plant crops. It is be­lieved that any­thing plant­ed on the day will thrive, thanks to the an­tic­i­pat­ed rains. How­ev­er, this year there was a no­tice­able de­cline in plant­i­ng ac­tiv­i­ty, rais­ing con­cerns among agri­cul­tur­al en­thu­si­asts.

Along the M2 Ring Road yes­ter­day, very few farm­ers were out tend­ing to crops in the un­du­lat­ing agri­cul­tur­al fields. Farmer Glen­ford Ram­nar­ine said on­ly a hand­ful of peo­ple plant­ed at Poodai La­goon on the Pe­nal Rock Road.

“Maybe they are watch­ing the weath­er. We have not had the lev­el of rain we nor­mal­ly have at this time of the year,” Ram­nar­ine said. He added that peo­ple have been plant­i­ng year-round and have not been wait­ing for the Cor­pus Christi hol­i­day to plant.

At the M2-Ring Road, Shawn Hen­ry at­trib­uted the de­creased ac­tiv­i­ty to the dry con­di­tion of the land.

“You see how every­body’s land is nice­ly ploughed up? Well, they are wait­ing for the rains to come, and then peo­ple will plant,” he ex­plained as he mould­ed some me­l­on­gene trees.

Re­bec­ca, a home gar­den­er from Clax­ton Bay, said she was ab­stain­ing from plant­i­ng this year be­cause of the preva­lence of Gi­ant African snails.

“I usu­al­ly plant for the hol­i­day, but this year, I have not been mo­ti­vat­ed be­cause the African snails are killing every­thing,” she said.

She said she used snail bait and neem oil and spent $1,300 on her last crop but reaped noth­ing.

De­ter­mined to com­bat the prob­lem, she said, “For now, I am on a snail erad­i­ca­tion and pre­ven­tion pro­gramme.”

Di­anand Ganess­ingh, an­oth­er farmer, high­light­ed evolv­ing farm­ing tech­niques and de­par­ture from tra­di­tion­al meth­ods as a pos­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion for the de­cline in Cor­pus Christi plant­i­ng.

The shift to­ward hy­dro­pon­ics, the nu­tri­ent film tech­nique (NFT), and drip-to-waste tech­niques, es­pe­cial­ly among home gar­den­ers, elim­i­nat­ed the con­straints as­so­ci­at­ed with tra­di­tion­al prac­tices, he ex­plained.

Com­mer­cial farm­ers are more like­ly to con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion, said Ganess­ingh.

Mean­while, agron­o­mist Akanath Singh, own­er of the Plant Di­ag­nos­tic Clin­ic, shared his ob­ser­va­tion that gar­den­ing has ex­pe­ri­enced a surge since the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Singh said peo­ple are no longer wait­ing ex­clu­sive­ly for Cor­pus Christi to plant, but are in­volved in year-round cul­ti­va­tion.

“Peo­ple have been plant­i­ng for the past two years be­cause the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic dis­placed many fam­i­lies. Peo­ple lost jobs, busi­ness­es lost sales, so there has been a spike in first-time home farm­ers and gar­den­ers. It is good to see so many fam­i­lies get­ting in­to agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, plant­i­ng what they eat and get­ting in­to agri­cul­ture as a busi­ness,” he said.

Singh said more than 500 peo­ple with whom he in­ter­act­ed first-hand have turned to farm­ing as a means of sus­te­nance and in­come.

In ad­di­tion to cul­ti­va­tion, sev­er­al church­es con­duct­ed the tra­di­tion­al rit­u­al of bless­ing seeds fol­low­ing Cor­pus Christi Mass. Singh said he was proud that so many peo­ple are con­tin­u­ing to plant, not on­ly on Cor­pus Christi, but year-round.