Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

More than 150 co­conut farm­ers have stepped for­ward to take part in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s largest co­conut in­dus­try re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion ef­fort in decades, as the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries yes­ter­day be­gan dis­trib­ut­ing thou­sands of high-yield Brazil­ian green dwarf seedlings plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al ex­pect­ed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand pro­duc­tion and un­lock ma­jor ex­port po­ten­tial.

Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram, speak­ing at the Min­istry’s Re­search Di­vi­sion in Cen­teno, de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as the cor­ner­stone of Gov­ern­ment’s plan to re­plant one mil­lion co­conut trees and re­build an in­dus­try that has suf­fered a steep de­cline over the past 30 years.

“These seedlings are not sym­bol­ic; they are a strate­gic in­vest­ment,” Rati­ram said. “Each plant has the po­ten­tial to pro­duce more than 600 mil­li­l­itres of co­conut wa­ter per nut, po­si­tion­ing our farm­ers to meet surg­ing glob­al de­mand.”

Co­conut wa­ter re­mains one of the fastest-grow­ing seg­ments of the glob­al bev­er­age in­dus­try, val­ued at US$4.4 bil­lion in 2024 and pro­ject­ed to sur­pass US$11 bil­lion by 2030. Rati­ram said Trinidad and To­ba­go is well placed to re-en­ter the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket, pro­vid­ed pro­duc­tion and val­ue-chain sys­tems are re­built.

“To­day we im­port more co­conut prod­ucts than we pro­duce,” he not­ed. “This in­ter­ven­tion is about re­vers­ing that trend and cre­at­ing new av­enues for ex­ports and rur­al in­come.”

The seedlings, sourced through tech­ni­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (CAR­DI), are known for ear­ly bear­ing traits, high wa­ter-pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty, and re­sis­tance to pests and dis­eases. Rati­ram said the part­ner­ship was sup­port­ed by fund­ing from the Eu­ro­pean Union, which played “a piv­otal role” in ad­vanc­ing the project.

The min­is­ter said the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of co­conut pro­duc­tion aligns with the Gov­ern­ment’s broad­er agri­cul­tur­al man­date, which in­cludes gen­er­at­ing TT$1 bil­lion in agri­cul­tur­al ex­port earn­ings and restor­ing the sec­tor’s con­tri­bu­tion to GDP.

“The aim is not on­ly to pro­duce raw nuts but to stim­u­late a full co­conut econ­o­my—farm­ing, pro­cess­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and ex­port,” he said. He added that proces­sors, bot­tlers, and man­u­fac­tur­ers will al­so be sup­port­ed to ex­pand their pro­duc­tion of oils, flour, milk, fi­bre, and per­son­al-care prod­ucts.

Turn­ing to the rice in­dus­try, Rati­ram said the coun­try is present­ly in its re­plant­i­ng phase fol­low­ing re­cent har­vests. He con­firmed that some ger­mi­na­tion is­sues had been re­port­ed with seed stock, but these are be­ing treat­ed in di­rect col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Guyana Rice Board.

Rati­ram em­pha­sised that none of the rice farm­ers he has spo­ken with in­clud­ing up to the day be­fore has not re­port­ed any short­age of fer­tilis­er.

The min­is­ter in­sist­ed that ru­mours of ma­jor prob­lems in the sec­tor do not re­flect the re­al­i­ty on the ground.

“These farm­ers out there shouldn’t be scared of any of the talk they are hear­ing out­side,” he said. “Let’s fo­cus on the de­vel­op­ment plan for each com­mod­i­ty.”

He added that min­istry’s teams—re­searchers, field of­fi­cers, and tech­ni­cal staff—con­tin­ue to meet farm­ers every week, in­clud­ing week­ends, to ad­dress is­sues crop by crop.