In the heart of Plum Mi­tan, San­gre Grande, where the hori­zon is de­fined by the vi­brant green of veg­etable canopies and the air car­ries the scent of damp earth and ripen­ing pro­duce, a lega­cy is be­ing cul­ti­vat­ed.

This is not mere­ly a sto­ry of agri­cul­ture; it is a chron­i­cle of a lin­eage of women who have de­fined their lives by the strength of their hands and the re­silience of their spir­its. At the cen­tre of this nar­ra­tive are 58-year-old San­ra­jee Sook­lal and her daugh­ter, Rish­ma Sook­lal-Sook­nanan—two women who rep­re­sent the past, present and fu­ture of Caribbean farm­ing.

Their lives have be­come a fo­cal point for a broad­er con­ver­sa­tion about the sur­vival of T&T’s food sys­tems.

This fam­i­ly’s pri­vate ded­i­ca­tion mir­rors a sig­nif­i­cant glob­al shift in per­spec­tive as the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion (FAO) has of­fi­cial­ly launched the In­ter­na­tion­al Year of the Woman Farmer 2026.

This move­ment turns the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty’s fo­cus to­ward recog­nis­ing the es­sen­tial, yet of­ten over­looked, con­tri­bu­tions of women like Sook­lal-Sook­nanan and Sook­lal, while is­su­ing an ur­gent call for ac­cel­er­at­ing gen­der equal­i­ty in agri­food sys­tems.

The ini­tia­tive was pre­sent­ed dur­ing the 39th ses­sion of the FAO Re­gion­al Con­fer­ence for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (LARC39) in Brasília and aims to raise aware­ness of the es­sen­tial role of women in agri­food sys­tems, draw at­ten­tion to the struc­tur­al chal­lenges they face, pro­mote trans­for­ma­tive pub­lic poli­cies, mo­bilise strate­gic in­vest­ments and strength­en part­ner­ships to close gen­der gaps in the sec­tor.

In Plum Mi­tan, these bar­ri­ers are not ab­stract con­cepts; they are the dai­ly re­al­i­ties of bro­ken drainage sys­tems and the phys­i­cal toll of man­u­al labour with­out mod­ern ma­chin­ery.

Yet, as the UN high­lights that clos­ing the gen­der gap in agri­cul­ture could raise glob­al GDP, women like Sook­lal-Sook­nanan are al­ready prov­ing their worth, one har­vest at a time.

At 58 years old—hav­ing spent near­ly her en­tire life in­ter­twined with the land—Sook­lal rep­re­sents a vi­tal bridge be­tween the tra­di­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices of the past and the evolv­ing in­dus­try of 2026.

Her sto­ry is one of gen­er­a­tional con­ti­nu­ity.

As a sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion farmer who learned the trade from her par­ents, Lalay and Sum­intra (known af­fec­tion­ate­ly as Jan­ki) in Bar­rack­pore, Sook­lal has now passed the man­tle to her daugh­ter.

This third-gen­er­a­tion suc­ces­sion is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly rare in an era of rapid ur­ban­i­sa­tion, yet in Plum Mi­tan, it re­mains a cor­ner­stone of food se­cu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ty iden­ti­ty.

Her dai­ly labour cen­tres on a ro­bust va­ri­ety of crops in­clud­ing okra, cu­cum­ber, pump­kin and corn. Each plant rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent chal­lenge and a dif­fer­ent re­ward, from the steady har­vest­ing of okra to the ex­pan­sive vines of the pump­kin that an­chor her mar­ket of­fer­ings.

While mod­ern in­dus­tri­al farm­ing is of­ten char­ac­terised by high-tech ma­chin­ery and com­plex lo­gis­tics, Sook­lal’s ap­proach is root­ed in a strik­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal re­silience.

To her, farm­ing is as hard or as easy as the mind per­ceives it to be.

“If you want to make it hard for your­self, it will be hard,” she not­ed, with the wis­dom of some­one who has weath­ered decades of un­pre­dictable sea­sons adding, “But if you make it easy, it’ll be easy.”

This per­spec­tive isn’t a de­nial of the phys­i­cal toll—she ac­knowl­edges that the old­er gen­er­a­tion is of­ten “get­ting sick from it”—but rather a com­mit­ment to the “en­cour­age­ment” that comes from watch­ing a seed break through the earth.

For Sook­lal, the growth of a plant is a pri­ma­ry mo­ti­va­tor, a qui­et vic­to­ry against the el­e­ments.

“Some­times it is a bit hard. Some­times, you know, you get plen­ty dis­ease, but you can’t give up hope. Nev­er give up hope,” she ad­vised.

Sook­lal es­ti­mates there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 women cur­rent­ly ac­tive in farm­ing in her area, as she not­ed many of­ten go to till the land with their hus­bands.

She is firm in her be­lief that the gen­der of the farmer is sec­ondary to their mind­set.

To her, farm­ing is a uni­ver­sal call­ing: “Farm­ing is for every­body... once you put up your mind to it, you could make some­thing.”

For Sook­lal, the sight of her daugh­ter till­ing the fields isn’t just a sign of a shared ca­reer, but the con­tin­u­a­tion of a gru­elling and sa­cred fam­i­ly tra­di­tion. She spoke of her daugh­ter’s tran­si­tion in­to agri­cul­ture with a mix­ture of sea­soned prag­ma­tism and qui­et an­ces­tral pride, not­ing that she de­lib­er­ate­ly taught her the “hard ways” of the land to en­sure her re­silience.

“I teach them the hard ways to learn, to still plant some­thing and sur­vive with it. Ei­ther you make it small or you get through it,” Sook­lal shared.

Three gen­er­a­tions of re­silience in the soil

For Sook­lal’s daugh­ter the lan­guage of the land is a moth­er tongue passed down through three gen­er­a­tions of cal­loused hands and steady hearts.

A fix­ture in the agri­cul­tur­al land­scape of Plum Mi­tan for over two decades, Rish­ma, who got mar­ried at 20, in­to a farm­ing fam­i­ly, rep­re­sents a fad­ing yet fierce breed of fe­male farm­ers who view the soil not just as a work­place, but as a lega­cy of in­de­pen­dence.

By the age of 14, while her peers were fo­cused on the tran­si­tion to sec­ondary school, Rish­ma was al­ready learn­ing the del­i­cate bal­ance of rice, sug­ar­cane and pep­per cul­ti­va­tion.

Now a vet­er­an with 23 years of ex­pe­ri­ence, Rish­ma man­ages ap­prox­i­mate­ly sev­en acres of land along­side her hus­band.

To­geth­er, they are “all-around” farm­ers, ro­tat­ing crops such as okra, sweet pep­pers, me­l­on­gene (baigan) and wa­ter­mel­on de­pend­ing on the sea­son and the soil’s needs.

For Rish­ma, the work is holis­tic; she is in­volved in every stage of the process, from clear­ing and fix­ing the land to the tech­ni­cal de­mands of spray­ing and groom­ing the crops.

“I do every­thing a man can do,” she says with qui­et con­fi­dence, dis­miss­ing the idea that gen­der dic­tates ca­pa­bil­i­ty in the field. The work is holis­tic; she is in­volved in every stage of the process.

“I do every­thing a man can do,” she says with qui­et con­fi­dence, dis­miss­ing the idea that gen­der dic­tates ca­pa­bil­i­ty in the field.

How­ev­er, Rish­ma not­ed a sharp de­cline in agri­cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ty over the last decade, es­ti­mat­ing that the num­ber of ac­tive farm­ers has plum­met­ed by near­ly 50 per cent.

The rea­sons are fa­mil­iar to many in the in­dus­try: a lack of mod­ern ma­chin­ery; crum­bling drainage in­fra­struc­ture; and in­suf­fi­cient sup­port for wa­ter man­age­ment dur­ing heavy rains.

De­spite these sys­temic hur­dles, Rish­ma’s phi­los­o­phy re­mains root­ed in the val­ues taught by her el­ders: self-in­de­pen­dence and the dig­ni­ty of earn­ing one’s own dol­lar.

This spir­it of au­ton­o­my is what she hopes to mod­el for her 14-year-old daugh­ter, Priya.

While Priya shows a nat­ur­al “hand” for agri­cul­ture, Rish­ma is adamant that her daugh­ter should choose her own path, though she re­mains a con­stant pres­ence in the gar­den to­day.

“So if she choos­es to do it, it is her choice be­cause she has a hand for agri­cul­ture. She is with us in and out in the gar­den as well. So, it’s her choice. I’m not go­ing to stop her,” Rish­ma added.