Shal­iza Has­sanali

Marp­er Farms in Man­zanil­la, which once pro­duced the widest col­lec­tion of co­coa germ plasm world over, has fall­en in­to ru­in. Af­ter the op­er­a­tions was scaled down in 1993, the farm, which was a ma­jor part of the glob­al con­ser­va­tion ef­fort in co­coa, man­go, av­o­ca­do, ba­nana and cit­rus ge­net­ic re­sources, is now an eye­sore with aban­doned glass nurs­eries, rust­ing wa­ter pumps, derelict build­ings and a di­lap­i­dat­ed agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess road. Farm­ers from far-flung ar­eas such as Matelot and Rio Claro, who once ob­tained the best qual­i­ty plants from this 100-acre cen­tre, are plead­ing with Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion Vas­ant Bharath to re­sus­ci­tate the hold­ing to help re­duce the coun­try's $4 bil­lion food im­port bill and en­sure food se­cu­ri­ty.

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Food Crop Farm­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion Ter­rence Hay­wood said the farm, if re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed and put in­to full use, can be used as a train­ing cen­tre for bud­ding agri­cul­tur­al­ists and farm­ers, gen­er­ate jobs and pro­duce a va­ri­ety of seedlings that can be sold at re­duced prices to farm­ers.

It can al­so be con­vert­ed in­to an eco park for tourists with its dense veg­e­ta­tion and beau­ti­ful land­scape.

"This place has a lot of po­ten­tial," Hay­wood points out. "How­ev­er, it is bad­ly un­der-utilised." Hay­wood said the ex­per­i­men­tal farm was the ide­al lo­ca­tion to de­vel­op a va­ri­ety of nurs­eries un­der dis­ease-free con­di­tions, stat­ing that for years farm­ers had been clam­our­ing for an in­crease in plant pro­duc­tion.

Many of the plants, he said, were grown or­gan­i­cal­ly. Hay­wood said thou­sands of plants could be prop­a­gat­ed to serve the farm­ing pop­u­la­tion. Known for pro­duc­ing the finest co­coa in the world to­day, Hay­wood said, T&T had great po­ten­tial in the co­coa in­dus­try which re­mains un­tapped. The cen­tre, which came on stream in 1924 to meet the needs of the grow­ing farm­ing pop­u­la­tion with hy­brid plant ma­te­r­i­al, was forced to re­duce its work force af­ter the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment of­fered 50 of its 85 em­ploy­ees vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion claim­ing the en­ter­prise was be­ing op­er­at­ed un­prof­itably. The re­main­ing 35 work­ers who re­fused the VSEP opt­ed to con­tin­ue work at the cen­tre lead­ing to a de­cline in plant prop­a­ga­tion.

This con­tributed to the de­cline in the co­coa in­dus­try which Bharath is try­ing to re­vive giv­en the need for the high­ly flavoured beans world­wide. At that time, for­mer Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of T&T di­rec­tor Hay­man Ramd­hanie re­called, the cen­tre was pro­duc­ing as many as 200,000 co­coa clones per year. Thou­sands of oth­er plants were al­so pro­duced, main­ly cit­rus, av­o­ca­do and man­go. Back then, T&T ex­port­ed 35,000 tonnes of co­coa each year. "To­day, pro­duc­tion has dropped to 600 tonnes with farm­ers wait­ing as many as five years to ac­cess high qual­i­ty plants from the coun­try's three main farms at St Au­gus­tine, Cen­teno and La Pas­to­ra," said Ramd­hanie, who works as an agri­cul­tur­al su­per­vi­sor.

"Some farm­ers claim they have been wait­ing as long as five years for plants. And when the farms get the plants they on­ly give you a lim­it­ed amount." Ramd­hanie said to com­pound mat­ters, own­ers of pri­vate plant shops charged farm­ers "a pound and a crown" for plants which made many farm­ers move on to oth­er pur­suits. Ramd­hanie not­ed that a large pro­por­tion of the plants orig­i­nal­ly es­tab­lished at the farm had sur­vived al­most 70 years and, though age­ing, con­tin­ued to be of great im­por­tance to the work of the Co­coa Re­search Unit at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. Al­though the trees at Marp­er Farms are now old, they con­tin­ue to serve as an im­por­tant an­chor in con­firm­ing the iden­ti­ty of clone in the in­ter­na­tion­al co­coa gene bank and re­plac­ing ma­te­ri­als which have proven dif­fi­cult to es­tab­lish.