Af­ter the British lost the Amer­i­can War of In­de­pen­dence they brought Merikin African War­rior Tribes who fought along­side them to es­tab­lish their new home in Moru­ga, Trinidad.

And the Merikins brought some­thing spe­cial with them; an an­cient grain.

When the Merikins ar­rived they met the Warao peo­ple that were al­ready here.

The In­di­an corn that was be­ing cul­ti­vat­ed by the Warao was mixed with the grain brought from West Africa by the Merikins and the Moru­ga Hill Rice was born.

And that lega­cy re­mains on the hills of the Moru­ga to to­day.

“I grew up here on my grand­fa­thers es­tate work­ing co­coa, fig, pee­wah and my grand­moth­er al­ways plant­ed hill rice, it was a tra­di­tion in our fam­i­ly but it was plant­ed by hand,” man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Caribbean Sea and Air Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (CSAM) Mark For­ge­nie told Guardian Me­dia an In­spireTT in­ter­view.

For­ge­nie knew first hand about the rice but it was on­ly when his fa­ther had an un­for­tu­nate health scare did the rice play a more piv­otal role in his life.

For­ge­nie qual­i­fied as a mer­chant navy cap­tain in Eng­land in 1995.

“When my fa­ther had a stroke in 2008 a friend of his from Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege told me to ‘get some of that hill rice and get your fa­ther to eat the rice it will help put more oxy­gen in­to his brain’,” For­ge­nie said.

“And I start­ed look­ing, came back to Moru­ga and found that every­body, my cousins, and un­cles, dropped off pro­duc­tion be­cause it was so labour in­ten­sive and I swore I would find a way to make it sim­pler and more ef­fi­cient,” he said.

While For­ge­nie was in Suri­name for work he made a con­nec­tion that would help him achieve his goal.

“I was on a seis­mic project in Suri­name just hap­pened to meet one of the top five per­sons in the Unit­ed Na­tions re­search­ing dry land rice be­cause they know in the fu­ture wa­ter is go­ing to be very scarce,” For­ge­nie said.

“So, foods that can be pro­duced with very lit­tle wa­ter or am­bi­ent rain­fall alone will be­come the norm,” he said.

Moru­ga Hill Rice grows com­plete­ly on dry land.

“He came back here and saw my ear­ly at­tempts at mech­a­nis­ing and he gave some oth­er ideas and put in con­tact with an­oth­er pro­fes­sor from Japan. I flew to Japan and I was able to have deep­er con­ver­sa­tions with them about the hill rice prod­uct and what it could do,” For­ge­nie said.

“It was these se­ries of events that led me from wak­ing up one morn­ing to say I am go­ing to mech­a­nise hill rice to where we are to­day and it is still be­ing im­proved,” he said.

In 2004, CSAM was in­cor­po­rat­ed and equip­ment iden­ti­fied and mod­i­fied to mech­a­nise the farm­ing of Moru­ga Hill Rice.

This means that large vol­umes of high qual­i­ty, all-nat­ur­al, non-GMO, nu­tri­tious Moru­ga Hill Rice can now be pro­duced.

“We use our state of the art equip­ment, along with our pas­sion for MHR and our nat­ur­al sur­round­ings, to care for the in­tegri­ty of every grain of rice,” For­ge­nie stat­ed.

“Once we cut and har­vest and thresh our rice it nev­er touch­es the ground so we en­sure the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct. All the iron, all the fi­bre, all the cal­ci­um that are the nat­ur­al ben­e­fits of that rice stays in the grain un­til it comes out here goes in­to the com­put­er sorter and is bagged for the con­sumer,” For­ge­nie said.

In 2011, the nu­tri­tion­al val­ue of Moru­ga Hill Rice was test­ed.

“Nu­tri­tion­al­ly the rice is on par, and some­times su­pe­ri­or to glob­al wild rices. To add to this, Moru­ga Hill Rice grows on dry land, which makes it cli­mate-smart rice in a time of glob­al warm­ing and its re­lat­ed ad­verse ef­fects on glob­al food sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” For­ge­nie stat­ed.

“That means the rice you are eat­ing is more like a car­bo­hy­drate like a pro­vi­sion, it doesn’t give you the sug­ar white rices and brown rices in­her­ent­ly have and the high fi­bre means you di­gest slow­ly so peo­ple who are di­a­bet­ic, per­sons who are anaemic, this com­bi­na­tion of nu­tri­tion­al prop­er­ties gives you the med­i­c­i­nal val­ue over time and helps your in­ter­nal or­gans to heal,” he said.

For­ge­nie said the process from the field to pack­ag­ing takes two days.

“With the har­vester we can har­vest an en­tire acre in two hours and then we dry those 20 to 22 bags for two to three hours in an elec­tri­cal dri­er and it steps down the mois­ture con­tent at which point we trans­fer to the si­los and then it can store safe­ly for up to two years,” For­ge­nie said.

“That’s an­oth­er amaz­ing fea­ture of the grain. The grain can stay prop­er­ly and nat­u­ral­ly with all the health ben­e­fits for two years at am­bi­ent tem­per­a­ture but be­cause of the de­mand we nor­mal­ly mill it in a week,” he said.

For­ge­nie said a fresh batch of rice is sent to su­per­mar­kets around the coun­try every fort­night.

So far the rice is found in 52 su­per­mar­kets in Trinidad and two in To­ba­go.

Glob­al­ly cus­tomers can al­so or­der on­line for de­liv­ery di­rect­ly through e-com­merce,” For­ge­nie said.

Vista Do­ra­do Es­tates Moru­ga Hill Rice was trade­marked in T&T and CSAM was sub­se­quent­ly trade­marked Moru­ga Hill Rice un­der its Vista Do­ra­do Es­tates brand.

But can Moru­ga Hill Rice be grown every­where?

‘The iron con­tent of the rice is de­ter­mined by the iron in the soil which is unique to the Moru­ga clays. The Moru­ga clays stretch to Guayagua­yare in the East all the way to Ica­cos point in the West and a bit north to Tabaquite,” For­ge­nie ex­plained.

“I’m pret­ty cer­tain that with­in that ge­o­graph­i­cal area the rice will up­take the nu­tri­tion and have the same nu­tri­tion pro­file and flavour as it is in Moru­ga,” he said.

“What I do know too from talk­ing to per­sons at the Namde­v­co farm­ers mar­ket is that dur­ing World War II the colo­nial gov­ern­ment had this rice plant­ed in Lopinot, Arou­ca and Diego Mar­tin. It will grow it will bear but it will not have the same nu­tri­tion­al pro­file as it does in the Moru­ga clays,” For­ge­nie said.

For­ge­nie said 12 oth­er as­so­ci­a­tion groups are cur­rent­ly us­ing the mech­a­nised process to pro­duce high qual­i­ty nu­tri­tious af­ford­able food.

In ad­di­tion to that the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T have pro­duced poul­try feed from the waste.

“Now we are ac­tu­al­ly able to have Hill rice and Warao corn to pro­duce an all lo­cal, all nat­ur­al poul­try feed,” he said.