Shereen Ali

"Farm­ing does not have to mean back­break­ing work in the hot sun with a hoe any more. You can grow an en­tire crop in­doors, for in­stance, or in a par­tial­ly shad­ed en­clo­sure, with much less labour, mech­a­ni­sa­tion and ap­pro­pri­ate tech­nol­o­gy," said Dr Wayne Gan­pat on March 31.

Dr Gan­pat is a se­nior lec­tur­er in the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture. He was talk­ing about the many pos­si­bil­i­ties in agri­cul­tur­al ap­proach­es these days, in a Guardian in­ter­view at his of­fice at UWI, St Au­gus­tine. "It's ex­treme­ly im­por­tant that we learn to farm smarter," he said.

But how ex­act­ly do we do this? Can ideas from aquapon­ics (the rear­ing of fish and plants in a sym­bi­ot­ic sys­tem), or Cu­ba's or­gan­ic ur­ban gar­dens, or even peep­on­ics (yes, peep­on­ics–in which you use fil­tered urine to fer­tilise plants) help us grow more of our own food, in bet­ter ways? What kinds of ef­fec­tive agro-tech­nol­o­gy can we cre­ate or adapt right here in T&T to suit an ever-dry­ing and change­able Caribbean cli­mate?

These ques­tions are all part of UWI's chal­lenge to teenagers, as the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture is cur­rent­ly invit­ing youth in sec­ondary schools to par­tic­i­pate in its first ever com­pe­ti­tion in agri­cul­tur­al in­no­va­tion.

Stu­dents are be­ing asked to pro­pose in­no­v­a­tive ideas for grow­ing food to ad­dress T&T food se­cu­ri­ty. Short-list­ed pro­pos­als must flesh out ideas in drawn de­signs, and a fi­nal ten win­ning de­signs will be brought to life as the stu­dent teams build table­top pro­to­types of their in­no­v­a­tive agri­cul­tur­al sys­tems. Ideas can al­so in­clude de­sign of com­put­erised ap­pli­ca­tions and pro­grammes to pow­er up or im­prove mech­a­nised grow sys­tems.

The con­test is part of the Agri­cul­ture Demon­stra­tion Of Prac­tices and Tech­nolo­gies (Adopt) project, which seeks in­no­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies to ad­dress agri­cul­tur­al chal­lenges, es­pe­cial­ly fo­cussing on non-tra­di­tion­al sys­tems for bet­ter small-scale farm­ing ap­proach­es.

This project comes un­der a larg­er project, span­ning three fac­ul­ties (Food and Agri­cul­ture, En­gi­neer­ing, and Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy), which is be­ing fund­ed by the UWI-T&T Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Im­pact (RDI) fund. This project, led by project team leader Dr Wendy-Ann Isaac, is called Tech­no­log­i­cal So­lu­tions for Im­proved Agro-En­vi­ron­ment and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty of Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment.

An­cient in­no­va­tions

A great idea, of course, does not have to be new, to be ef­fec­tive. The Xochim­il­co peo­ple back in the 1400s were ex­treme­ly in­no­v­a­tive–they cre­at­ed their own ar­ti­fi­cial agri­cul­tur­al is­lands, or "chi­nam­pas," with­in shal­low lake ar­eas of the Val­ley of Mex­i­co, in what used to be an ex­ten­sive sys­tem of fer­tile wet­lands and canals.

They cre­at­ed their is­land gar­dens from long rec­tan­gu­lar rafts laden down with beds of earth and sed­i­ments from the lake. There they grew maize, beans, squash, toma­toes, pep­pers, flow­ers, and even small trees, whose roots of­ten grew straight down to the lakebed, help­ing to an­chor the is­land. Be­cause it was in a lake, no ir­ri­ga­tion was need­ed. By the ear­ly 1500s, be­fore the Span­ish con­quest, chi­nam­pas cov­ered near­ly 9,000 hectares (22,230 acres) on Lakes Xochim­il­co and Chal­co. Each hectare (2.47 acres) could feed about 20 peo­ple, sup­port­ing most of Tenochti­tl�n's Aztec res­i­dents.

And cen­turies be­fore that, sixth cen­tu­ry Chi­nese farm­ers had fig­ured out how to raise two or three food sources at the same time, of­ten re­cy­cling wastes from one to be nu­tri­ents for an­oth­er.

For in­stance, they reared ducks in cages above ponds of fin­fish–they al­so reared cat­fish in an­oth­er pond, in­to which wa­ter from the fin­fish pond would be drained. In this arrange­ment, the fin­fish were fed with duck drop­pings, whilst the cat­fish were fed with fin­fish waste. Any "left­over food" would fer­tilise rice in the flood­ed pad­dy fields. They had es­sen­tial­ly in­vent­ed the ear­li­est form of aquapon­ics.

Re­think­ing cur­rent meth­ods

Fast for­ward to to­day, and quite a few farm­ers in T&T are re­think­ing tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of grow­ing crops in open fields, es­pe­cial­ly in a time of cli­mate change and ex­treme weath­er events.

Some farm­ers have al­ready adapt­ed their field meth­ods, or are in the process of re­plac­ing open field farm­ing with farm­ing in build­ings or par­tial­ly cov­ered sheds or tents, grow­ing a va­ri­ety of plants and/or an­i­mals in more con­trolled sys­tems.

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But not near­ly enough farm­ers, or fu­ture farm­ers, are aware of the range of pos­si­bil­i­ties, says Dr Gan­pat, who is es­pe­cial­ly keen to raise aware­ness in stu­dents of the val­ue of a ca­reer in agri­cul­ture. There is a prob­lem of not enough mod­ern agri­cul­tur­al tech­nolo­gies be­ing taught in schools in T&T, said Dr Gan­pat, not­ing that oth­er Caribbean is­lands take it much more se­ri­ous­ly.

"Even when we teach it in schools, it's of­ten just in the form of a kitchen gar­den, so chil­dren as­so­ciate all agri­cul­ture with hot sun, hard work and low sci­ence," he said. The an­ti-agri­cul­ture stig­ma is strength­ened when schools make the mis­take of on­ly send­ing their less aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in­clined stu­dents to agri­cul­ture class­es, he added.

Ke­nia-Rosa Cam­po, a re­searcher in the Adopt project and the co­or­di­na­tor of the school com­pe­ti­tion, said: "In a sur­vey, we found that the at­ti­tude was–if you can't make it in life, you farm.

But the lack in ed­u­ca­tion in agri­cul­ture caus­es many farm­ers to abuse or mis­use pes­ti­cides and chem­i­cals, which end up be­ing harm­ful to us when we eat their crops...They too of­ten don't have the ed­u­ca­tion to ap­ply tech­nolo­gies wise­ly."

Too many stu­dents here sim­ply don't know about cur­rent tech­nolo­gies which have been dra­mat­i­cal­ly chang­ing agri­cul­ture in oth­er places, feels Dr Gan­pat, so they stig­ma­tise agri­cul­ture from a mis­con­ceived no­tion of what it in­volves. And the scary part is the fact that T&T's farm­ers are lit­er­al­ly dy­ing off, the av­er­age age of a Trinidad farmer is 60.

"If we don't re­place them, then our food se­cu­ri­ty is go­ing to be at se­ri­ous risk not too long from now. And who bet­ter to in­volve than our bright young stu­dents?" said Gan­pat.

The Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture is us­ing the school com­pe­ti­tion as­pect of its Adopt project to help pro­mote more healthy in­ter­est in agri­science among young peo­ple. En­er­gy firm Rep­sol is a main spon­sor of the com­pe­ti­tion.

UWI is al­so aim­ing to build bet­ter links be­tween sec­ondary schools and UWI's Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture pro­grammes, spread­ing the word that a good ca­reer in agri­cul­ture is en­tire­ly pos­si­ble and vi­able here. "There are lots of op­por­tu­ni­ties in agri­cul­ture–'agri-pre­neurs' can em­pow­er them­selves and run their own busi­ness­es," said Cam­po, "...and they can use mod­ern tech­nolo­gies to sim­pli­fy and max­imise pro­duc­tion."

So what is Pro­tect­ed Agri­cul­ture?

UWI's cur­rent Adopt project, "blends Pro­tect­ed Agri­cul­ture shade house tech­nol­o­gy with a com­bi­na­tion of al­ter­na­tive agri­cul­tur­al meth­ods like hy­dro­pon­ics, organo­pon­ics, aquapon­ics, peep­on­ics, aero­pon­ics, ver­mipon­ics and bar­relpon­ics grow­ing sys­tems, and LED light tech­nol­o­gy, for sus­tain­able food pro­duc­tion us­ing low-cost or re­cy­clable ma­te­ri­als."

So what, ex­act­ly, is Pro­tect­ed Agri­cul­ture? It is the "mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment to achieve op­ti­mal growth", ac­cord­ing to the CAR­DI web­site. This is ad­mit­ted­ly a very broad de­f­i­n­i­tion, which can in­clude many com­bi­na­tions of meth­ods.

The one thing they all have in com­mon is the use of some form of build­ing or pro­tec­tive shade struc­ture, with­in which (or un­der­neath which) the agri­cul­ture hap­pens, of­ten with the help of mech­a­nised and/or oth­er kinds of tech­nol­o­gy to re­duce labour needs and costs.

The most ex­pen­sive part is the ini­tial start­up costs. But you can re­cov­er these costs af­ter some years of pro­duc­tion, said Cam­po. This means you could con­ceiv­ably farm com­fort­ably from your of­fice, lo­cat­ed next to a grow-room–or farm part-time, while do­ing oth­er jobs.

Pro­tect­ed Agri­cul­ture can, for in­stance, mean grow­ing veg­eta­bles to­tal­ly in­doors in en­riched min­er­alised wa­ter in ar­ti­fi­cial LED light–a hy­dro­pon­ics ap­proach. It could al­so mean grow­ing plants in tubs of com­post un­der a se­mi-open tent in a field, open to fil­tered nat­ur­al sun­light. Or it could mean set­ting up an in­te­grat­ed sys­tem where you grow both plants and fish (of­ten tilapia), the fish poop fer­til­is­ing the plants–an aquapon­ics ap­proach.

For some farm­ers, it may mean grow­ing crops in more labour-in­ten­sive, shared com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens of raised beds in con­crete or brick en­clo­sures, right in the heart of your own town or city, as they do in Cu­ba in their Organop�nicos ap­proach. For oth­er farm­ers, it may mean to­tal­ly mech­a­nised, closed green­house sys­tems. It just de­pends on your goals, needs, and re­sources.

UWI is invit­ing stu­dent teams to re­search these and oth­er ar­eas, to come up with their own work­able, in­no­v­a­tive projects for ap­ply­ing Pro­tect­ed Agri­cul­ture sys­tems. All sec­ondary schools are in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate. Dead­line for sub­mit­ting pro­pos­als is April 30–so, get ready, get set, go!

BOX 1: 164 words (*must be used)

AGRI CON­TEST DEAD­LINE APRIL 30

Stu­dent teams in Forms 2 to 5 of all sec­ondary schools are in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the com­pe­ti­tion.

Phase I: In­ter­est­ed schools should send a let­ter with a pro­pos­al of their in­no­v­a­tive ideas to ad­dress food se­cu­ri­ty us­ing the com­pe­ti­tion guide­lines, to the De­part­ment of Food Pro­duc­tion at UWI. Dead­line is April 30, 2016.

Phase II: From these pro­pos­als, 50 will be short-list­ed. These stu­dent teams will then be asked to sub­mit bud­gets and draw­ings of their de­signs. Each school can sub­mit up to two teams, with each team com­pris­ing five to ten stu­dents.

Phase III: From the 50 pro­pos­als, a pan­el of judges will se­lect ten school teams to build ta­ble-top pro­to­types of their pro­posed de­signs. These de­mo mod­els will be dis­played at UWI on June 30.

Con­tact: In­ter­est­ed schools can con­tact the De­part­ment of Food Pro­duc­tion at UWI via email at food.pro­duc­tion@sta.uwi.edu, adopt.uwir­di.project@gmail.com or call 662-2002 ext. 82090 or 84055 for fur­ther.