SHAS­TRI BOODAN

It is time to stop the old talk and make the co­coa in­dus­try prof­itable, Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Sen­a­tor De­vant Ma­haraj said on Wednes­day.Speak­ing at the launch of a Co­coa Clus­ter Project at the San An­to­nio Es­tate, Gran Cou­va, Ma­haraj said a lot has been said about the high qual­i­ty and at­trac­tive­ness of T&T co­coa but if farm­ers find the ac­tiv­i­ty un­prof­itable the in­dus­try will grind to a halt."It is tru­ly dis­ap­point­ing that the sub-sec­tor has failed to de­vel­op in a sus­tain­able and prof­itable man­ner," he said.Ma­haraj said on­ly five per cent of the co­coa pro­duced in the world was re­gard­ed as fine or flavour­ful and T&T co­coa fell in­to this cat­e­go­ry. He said there was a niche mar­ket for this type of co­coa which was main­ly used in spe­cial­ty prod­ucts and com­mand­ed a pre­mi­um price of more than US$5,000 a tonne com­pared to the price of bulk co­coa which sells for US$2,000 a tonne.

The min­is­ter re­ferred to Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice da­ta for 2003-2009 which showed that co­coa de­clined from an an­nu­al pro­duc­tion of 1320 met­ric tonnes to 600 met­ric tonnes. He said Gov­ern­ment has adopt­ed a re­sults-based ap­proach through in­tro­duc­tion of ini­tia­tives such as the co­coa clus­ter project.He said: "We move a step clos­er to­wards not on­ly re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing the co­coa in­dus­try but al­so mon­etis­ing it."Ma­haraj said strate­gies to re­ha­bil­i­tate the co­coa in­dus­try will ad­dress labour short­ages and high costs, low farm pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, the age­ing farmer pop­u­la­tion, the at­trac­tive­ness of the in­dus­try to the younger gen­er­a­tion and prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with cap­i­tal and in­fra­struc­ture.He said the over­all goal was to or­gan­ise co­coa farm­ers in­to sev­er­al clus­ters to par­tic­i­pate in tar­get­ed de­liv­ery pro­grammes re­sult­ing in a stream­lined busi­ness geared to­ward im­proved pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, qual­i­ty, val­ue ad­di­tion and prof­itabil­i­ty.

The min­is­ter said the project rep­re­sent­ed a move away from dis­joint­ed ef­forts to­ward a sys­tems ap­proach where stake­hold­ers' is­sues and ini­tia­tives were in­te­grat­ed around a com­mon vi­sion, out­comes and val­ues.Ma­haraj said 11 co­coa clus­ters had been formed in­volv­ing more than 300 farm­ers in co­coa grow­ing ar­eas across the coun­try. He said 200 farm­ers had been in­volved in in­tense prac­ti­cal hands-on train­ing and pow­er tools had been ac­quired for four clus­ters to en­able mech­a­ni­sa­tion of some ac­tiv­i­ties.He said the Tamana clus­ter was seek­ing to at­tract a di­rect link to a choco­lati­er for their beans and a lo­cal com­pa­ny af­fil­i­at­ed to Ar­ti­sans du Choco­lat in the Unit­ed King­dom is in­ter­est­ed in beans from the that clus­ter.

Ger­man choco­lati­er Lubek­er has ex­pressed an in­ter­est in beans from the Tabaquite clus­ter, the min­is­ter re­vealed.Ma­haraj said Cab­i­net had agreed to re­peal and re­place the ar­cha­ic Co­coa and Cof­fee In­dus­try Board Act of 1962 and form a new com­pa­ny to car­ry the in­dus­try for­ward in a prof­itable and sus­tain­able man­ner. This com­pa­ny will be the dri­ver for the new thrust to re­vi­talise the in­dus­try by fo­cus­ing on mar­ket­ing, sales, in­ter­nal qual­i­ty con­trol and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of re­search and de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives un­der­tak­en by the Co­coa Re­search Cen­tre.Farmer Jude Lee Sam said for co­coa to be prof­itable farm­ers must fetch at least US$7 a ki­lo for their crops. Lee Sam said many in­ter­na­tion­al buy­ers were in­ter­est­ed in lo­cal co­coa but changed their minds af­ter de­mands were made for a fair price. He said co­coa was now at­tract­ing part-time farm­ers and re­tirees who had noth­ing else to do with their time.