Rashan­da Mc Ken­na

Trinidad and To­ba­go is home to the cov­et­ed fine flavoured co­coa beans, a pres­ti­gious club to which on­ly eight oth­er coun­tries in the world be­long. Trini­tario Co­coa was once the dri­ving force of the lo­cal econ­o­my and in the 1930s T&T was the third largest pro­duc­er of qual­i­ty co­coa world­wide.

In a study pro­duced by Frances Bekele of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Sci­en­tists, the 1920s did not on­ly bring the great de­pres­sion, but there was an over­pro­duc­tion of co­coa world­wide which caused a re­duc­tion in its price. "In Trinidad to­tal pro­duc­tion de­creased as pro­duc­tion ex­pand­ed else­where, pri­mar­i­ly due to witch­b­room dis­ease which pre­cip­i­tat­ed the de­cline of the co­coa in­dus­try, af­fect­ing 28 per cent of the vi­able plan­ta­tions in 1928," Bekele said in a re­cent in­ter­view.

"Af­ter the 1930s, the co­coa in­dus­try was plagued by in­ef­fi­cien­cies in the pro­duc­tion sys­tem, wide­spread witch­b­room dis­ease, re­duc­ing yield and un­favourable mar­ket prices." The growth of the en­er­gy sec­tor in the 1970s and 1980s was the ma­jor blow to co­coa as it fur­ther di­min­ished its ca­pa­bil­i­ties, since agri­cul­tur­al labour mi­grat­ed to the oil belt, said Bekele.

Present­ly, the to­tal mar­ket share of the lo­cal co­coa in­dus­try is two per cent of the world mar­ket and with im­pend­ing ini­tia­tives to­ward pro­mot­ing T&T's food se­cu­ri­ty, the Gov­ern­ment hopes to re­store co­coa to its past glo­ry days. How­ev­er, there are past and present fac­tors which prove chal­leng­ing to this goal.

The gen­er­al man­ag­er at the San Juan Co­coa Es­tate in Gran Cou­va, Jude Solomon, re­vealed: "Poor man­age­ment struc­ture and scarce labour are plagu­ing the in­dus­try." Solomon said the dis­cov­ery of oil and the lu­cra­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties of the en­er­gy sec­tor ren­dered agri­cul­ture ir­rel­e­vant and T&T now pro­duces a mere two per cent of the world's fine flavoured beans.

Farm­ers are clam­our­ing for a change in the struc­ture of co­coa man­age­ment and an in­crease in labour, which they see as cru­cial to the re­vival of the once ro­bust sec­tor. Jude sug­gest­ed that cur­rent struc­tures with­in the in­dus­try are use­less to large es­tates such as the one he over­sees.

"Part of the prob­lem is an out­dat­ed and use­less Co­coa and Cof­fee In­dus­try Board (CCIB) since it func­tions like a mar­ket­ing as­so­ci­a­tion." He said the Co­coa and Cof­fee In­dus­try Act (CCIA) which brought the CCIB in­to ex­is­tence was for the sale of the two com­modi­ties and not the de­vel­op­ment of the re­spec­tive sec­tors.

Jude took is­sue with the fact that it is il­le­gal for co­coa to be sold do­mes­ti­cal­ly un­less the pro­duc­er sold di­rect­ly to the CCIB. The Montser­rat Co­coa Farm­ers (MCF) group of which Solomon is a mem­ber, has ad­vo­cat­ed that the CCIB be im­me­di­ate­ly re­placed by a Co­coa De­vel­op­ment Agency (CDA).

He said the CDA will be de­vot­ed to in­creas­ing co­coa pro­duc­tion and erad­i­cat­ing in­ef­fi­cien­cies by pro­vid­ing ap­pro­pri­ate train­ing to those in­ter­est­ed in en­ter­ing the in­dus­try. "How ridicu­lous is it for the CCIB to not know how many farm­ers there are, the num­ber of le­gal land hold­ings, the type of farm­ers and the num­ber of vi­able co­coa trees from var­i­ous plan­ta­tions? You can­not im­ple­ment a plan to as­sist co­coa un­less you know what you have," he said.

Solomon pro­posed that the CCIB should in­tro­duce a labour im­port sys­tem sim­i­lar to the one in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da. "Labour should be brought from oth­er Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries in an ex­change pro­gramme for a pe­ri­od of up to six months on a ro­ta­tion­al ba­sis af­ter which they go back home and an­oth­er set is brought in."

How­ev­er, he said the $5,000 cost of work per­mits for each em­ploy­ee would be too cost­ly for farm­ers to ab­sorb. Co­or­di­na­tor at CCIB, An­ton Wal­dron, said the Gov­ern­ment al­ready has 165 CEPEP work­ers in train­ing to be used on co­coa plan­ta­tions.

He said the Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, un­der its "Agri­cul­ture Now Ini­tia­tive," will pro­vide train­ing in plant­i­ng, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and har­vest­ing es­tates. Wal­dron said the cur­rent man­date is to im­pact pro­duc­tion lev­els for ex­port, there­fore har­vest­ing is be­ing done first. But he could not in­di­cate the time­line for the in­crease in pro­duc­tion say­ing a num­ber of ini­tia­tives have been iden­ti­fied.

These ini­tia­tives will dri­ve the process of co­coa re­vival and the long-term goal of the CCIB is to in­crease pro­duc­tion. He said this will strength­en the com­pet­i­tive­ness of lo­cal co­coa so that farm­ers may tap in­to ex­port mar­kets world­wide. "By amend­ing the struc­ture of man­ag­ing the in­dus­try and in­creas­ing labour, the Gov­ern­ment would in­tro­duce a qual­i­ty man­age­ment sys­tem," Wal­dron said.

Govt to im­prove struc­ture

•Sup­port­ing busi­ness peo­ple in the in­dus­try by reg­is­ter­ing co­coa and cof­fee pro­duc­ers and proces­sors in­to a data­base;

•De­vel­op­ing in­fra­struc­ture, roads and bridges to as­sist the farm­ers with trans­port;

•Al­ter­ing the leg­is­la­tion to al­low co­coa farm­ers to sell to any re­tail­er;

•Op­por­tu­ni­ties would be cre­at­ed for per­sons to pro­duce fin­ished goods by us­ing raw co­coa;

•Train­ing 30,000 CEPEP work­ers for the co­coa in­dus­try;

•Pro­vid­ing train­ing in co­coa plant­i­ng, prun­ing and har­vest­ing to farm­ers on their es­tates;

•Ad­vanc­ing and in­creas­ing tech­nol­o­gy in the pro­duc­tion of co­coa which was tra­di­tion­al­ly labour in­ten­sive.