Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

As the Gov­ern­ment moves to­wards the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the co­coa in­dus­try, farm­ers in north and east Trinidad be­lieve if au­to­mat­ed co­coa dry­ers and in­cen­tives for labour are not grant­ed, the in­dus­try will soon die. The in­dus­try which con­tributed to T&T's de­vel­op­ment for more than 200 years, be­gan dur­ing the Span­ish coloni­sa­tion, but de­clined rapid­ly in the 1920's be­cause of falling prices. Since the 1950s, re­peat­ed at­tempts have been un­suc­cess­ful­ly made to re­vi­talise the lo­cal co­coa busi­ness. In the 1990s, farm­ers said they were promised leas­es and in­cen­tives to work their co­coa fields but none was pro­vid­ed. Al­though T&T's co­coa has been ranked as the best in the world, lo­cal co­coa farm­ers con­tin­ue to aban­don their lands. Co­coa hous­es, once the hub of ac­tiv­i­ty, now lie dor­mant.

A few co­coa hous­es in Ma­yaro and Man­zanil­la have been con­vert­ed in­to homes, while many oth­ers lo­cat­ed along Caigual, To­co and San­gre Grande re­main de­sert­ed and cov­ered with vines and shrubs. With on­ly a few co­coa farm­ers op­er­at­ing in the Grande Riv­iere dis­trict, many com­plain of low co­coa prices, high labour costs, prae­di­al lar­ce­ny and prob­lems in ac­quir­ing loans be­cause they did not pos­sess land leas­es. For­mer co­coa farmer Ter­ry Valen­tine, of Ma­yaro, said he stopped cul­ti­vat­ing co­coa 15 years ago. "Co­coa is hard work and af­ter my un­cle passed on we could not get labour­ers to work in the fields," Valen­tine ex­plained. He said for gen­er­a­tions, the fam­i­ly cul­ti­vat­ed co­coa on 28 acres of land.

LEFT: Leslie Pe­ters of Grande Ri­vere, left, hands his fa­ther Leroy some co­coa har­vest­ed from their fields. Pho­tos: RAD­HI­CA SOOKRAJ

"Those es­tates are now aban­doned...I am look­ing to sell every­thing be­cause I don't think I will be able to go back to co­coa farm­ing," he said. Valen­tine not­ed that since Amo­co came to de­vel­op en­er­gy re­serves in the south- east­ern coasts, most labour­ers sought bet­ter em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties out­side of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. "Dur­ing the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, we may get some work­ers but most peo­ple have gone on to work for Cepep and oth­er Gov­ern­ment jobs, so that is the prob­lem," Valen­tine said. He said the co­coa hous­es at Bone­spoire Road were used as stock rooms. One of Valen­tine's rel­a­tive added that the sea blast from the At­lantic Ocean made it dif­fi­cult to dry co­coa af­ter be­ing har­vest­ed.

We're suf­fer­ing say To­co farm­ers

Farm­ers at Grande Riv­iere, To­co, al­so com­plained of sim­i­lar set­backs. Ash­ton Gomez who plants nine acres of co­coa said the ma­jor prob­lem was dry­ing co­coa. "What the Gov­ern­ment should do is to pro­vide an au­to­mat­ed dry­er for the co­coa," he said. "We can pay to use the dry­er be­cause dur­ing the rainy sea­son, we have re­al pres­sure to dry co­coa." He ex­plained that once a crop gots wet, it spoils. Gomez said: "That is our loss­es. We have to spend days sweat­ing the co­coa. We have to find a more ef­fi­cient method to dry co­coa." He said the Gov­ern­ment's plans to re­vi­talise the in­dus­try may prove eco­nom­i­cal in the fu­ture, once prop­er in­cen­tives for labour and au­to­mat­ed ma­chin­ery were in­stalled. He al­so com­plained that farm­ers did not get a fair price for co­coa.

Gomez al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment meth­ods to blend the co­coa which could then be sold lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly. Leroy Pe­ters and his son Leslie, who work a ten-acre par­cel of land at Grande Riv­iere, al­so com­plained of dif­fi­cul­ties in pro­duc­ing the crop. Pe­ters said de­spite the odds, they con­tin­ued to sell more than 600 ki­los of co­coa a year. He said: "We get be­tween $12 and $14 per ki­lo. That is not suf­fi­cient. Some­times we go to Ca­roni to sell our co­coa be­cause we fetch a bet­ter price than if we sell to the co­coa agents." He ex­plained that trans­porta­tion was a ma­jor set­back which was cre­at­ing ris­ing costs of pro­duc­tion.

"In the times gone by, we had work­ers who would clean the fields...We had benched roads in the fields so it was easy to bring out the pro­duce," Pe­ters said. "Now we don't have labour­ers... it is just me and my son and how much would we do?" He ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide leas­es for farm­ers so they could ob­tain loans. "We can­not go to the bank to get a loan be­cause we don't have any leas­es," Pe­ters said. "Since 1990, Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he would make arrange­ments for us to get leas­es. That was 20 years ago and we still wait­ing." In a re­cent in­ter­view, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharat said Gov­ern­ment was look­ing at ex­pand­ing the co­coa in­dus­try. He said that T&T's co­coa was the finest in the world.