Trinidad & To­ba­go has been se­lect­ed as the coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Caribbean re­gion for the launch of five projects of the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO) Glob­al Ac­tion on One Coun­try One Pri­or­i­ty Prod­uct (OCOP).

It is one of five demon­stra­tion coun­tries named for the OCOP ini­tia­tive—Bangladesh, Egypt, Malawi, Trinidad and To­ba­go and Uzbek­istan—which will im­pact some 78 na­tions around the world.

The OCOP ini­tia­tive is de­signed to help coun­tries pro­mote their dis­tinc­tive food and agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts.  It aims to build more sus­tain­able food val­ue chains, sup­port fam­i­ly and small­hold­er farm­ers to be prof­itable and im­prove their liveli­hoods, min­i­mize the use of chem­i­cal in­puts and nat­ur­al re­sources, re­duce food loss and waste, and lim­it the neg­a­tive im­pacts on the en­vi­ron­ment.

Al­to­geth­er, 78 na­tions from five FAO re­gions have been des­ig­nat­ed as po­ten­tial project coun­tries, plan­ning to pro­mote 50 Spe­cial Agri­cul­tur­al Prod­ucts (SAPs), un­der OCOP, which was launched by FAO last year.

Ac­cord­ing to FAO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al QU Dongyu, the SAPs—cov­er­ing all kinds of agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts—are lo­cal­ly known, avail­able, or un­der­uti­lized and have the po­ten­tial to be pro­mot­ed in na­tion­al, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. 

“They in­clude field and hor­ti­cul­ture crops as well as for­est and live­stock prod­ucts, they are lo­cal­ly known and unique to the spe­cif­ic agroe­co­log­i­cal re­gions, play a sig­nif­i­cant role in achiev­ing food se­cu­ri­ty and nu­tri­tion and have the po­ten­tial to be pro­mot­ed in lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets,” the FAO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al said in his re­marks at the launch event in Rome, to­day.

Why T&T was se­lect­ed

Trinidad and To­ba­go is one of the eight coun­tries cer­ti­fied as a pro­duc­er of fine aro­ma co­coa, a prod­uct of high qual­i­ty and in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion. Some 65 per­cent of the coun­try's co­coa comes from small pro­duc­ers (less than 5 hectares), and the coun­try ex­ports most­ly fer­ment­ed beans. The to­tal eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial of this prod­uct is cur­rent­ly un­der­ex­ploit­ed.  The FAO is seek­ing to pro­mote in­vest­ment in strength­en­ing this val­ue chain, pro­vid­ing mar­ket in­tel­li­gence.

There are over 800 ac­tive co­coa farm­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go. The Co­coa De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad & To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (CD­CT­TL) func­tion­al­ly or­gan­ised these farm­ers in­to 18 clus­ter com­mu­ni­ties, across the co­coa-grow­ing ar­eas of the coun­try to op­ti­mise their re­sources and pro­duc­tion. Each clus­ter has a lead farmer with sur­round­ing satel­lite farm­ers. The clus­ters are served by FAO Co­coa De­vel­op­ment Of­fi­cers. The pro­duc­ers have been ground­ed in the busi­ness of co­coa bean pro­duc­tion and trained in us­ing best prac­tices. These farm­ers are pre­pared to be en­gaged in mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The clus­ters par­tic­i­pate in CD­CT­TL tar­get­ed de­liv­ery pro­grammes via farmer field schools, where they are ex­posed to agron­o­my, qual­i­ty and pro­duc­tion train­ing, meth­ods of es­tate re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, graft­ing of plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al, as well as link­ages to val­ue add and oth­er sup­port ser­vices for stream­lin­ing of co­coa busi­ness.

Unique busi­ness mod­el helps small­hold­ers

The OCOP’s unique busi­ness mod­el aims to help small­hold­er farm­ers in­crease their food pro­duc­tion in a sus­tain­able way, gen­er­ates high­er in­comes and im­proves liveli­hoods, plac­ing farm­ers and their com­mu­ni­ties at the cen­tre.

The first phase, ex­pect­ed to start in Jan­u­ary 2023, will aim to in­clude a large part of the ap­pli­ca­tions re­ceived from the 78 coun­tries. These will in­clude main­ly SAPs based on field and hor­ti­cul­ture crops, re­flect­ing the type of sub­mis­sions made, but not ful­ly re­strict­ed to these.

The sec­ond phase will cov­er the re­main­ing coun­tries (and po­ten­tial new ones), draw on ex­pe­ri­ence gained with the OCOP, and would start in Ju­ly 2023.

The first-round demon­stra­tion project coun­tries iden­ti­fied for im­ple­men­ta­tion of OCOP are: Bangladesh, rep­re­sent­ing the Asia and the Pa­cif­ic Re­gion, which will pro­mote jack­fruit; Egypt, rep­re­sent­ing the Near East and North Africa Re­gion, which will pro­mote date palm; Malawi, rep­re­sent­ing the African Re­gion, which will pro­mote ba­nana; Trinidad and To­ba­go, rep­re­sent­ing the Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean Re­gion, which will pro­mote co­coa; and Uzbek­istan, rep­re­sent­ing the Eu­rope and Cen­tral Asia Re­gion, which will pro­mote sweet cher­ry.

These five demon­stra­tion project coun­tries for im­ple­men­ta­tion of OCOP will share and dis­sem­i­nate their ex­pe­ri­ences, in­no­va­tions and tech­nolo­gies dur­ing the de­vel­op­ment of their SAPs. A ded­i­cat­ed FAO glob­al OCOP web­site was al­so launched and will be a use­ful plat­form to share in­for­ma­tion and lessons learned dur­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Co­or­di­na­tion to ad­dress chal­lenges

The OCOP coun­try projects will co­or­di­nate fi­nan­cial, tech­ni­cal and hu­man re­sources to ad­dress the main chal­lenges iden­ti­fied for SAPs, and sup­port farm­ers and oth­er stake­hold­ers to fur­ther de­vel­op the val­ue chain.

The OCOP will fo­cus its ef­forts on prod­ucts from dry­lands, which rep­re­sent over 43 per­cent of the world's to­tal land area, and are home to an es­ti­mat­ed 2 bil­lion peo­ple, of whom around 90 per­cent are in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries; the trop­ics, which con­sti­tute 40 per­cent of the Earth's sur­face and are home to over 40 per­cent of the world's pop­u­la­tion, and moun­tains, which cov­er 25 per­cent of the world's land sur­face, and di­rect­ly sup­port 12 per­cent of the world's pop­u­la­tion. —Rome (FAO)