An op­por­tu­ni­ty from the past agri­cul­tur­al-based econ­o­my has arisen in the present. The price of raw co­coa on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket has in­creased. Con­se­quent­ly, and nat­u­ral­ly, so too the prices for the fin­ished prod­ucts de­rived from co­coa, choco­late, choco­late-based drinks, ice cream and oth­er forms in­to which co­coa is processed.

What all of that re­sults from is a buoy­ant in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket for this prod­uct in all its forms. Choco­late is one of those prod­ucts which has quite a mea­sure of what econ­o­mists call “elas­tic­i­ty” – mean­ing that price in­creas­es will be tol­er­at­ed by con­sumers be­cause of their de­sire for it – a favourite choco­late bar is ir­re­sistible to many, what­ev­er the price. Choco­late al­so fits in­to some­thing of a spe­cial gourmet cat­e­go­ry.

More than three cen­turies ago, co­coa was grown here and else­where in the re­gion as a pri­ma­ry ex­port prod­uct. The Trinidad and To­ba­go va­ri­ety was con­sid­ered to have quite a unique taste. How­ev­er, the co­coa in­dus­try be­came se­ri­ous­ly af­fect­ed by dis­eases, the fall in mar­ket prices and oth­er such prob­lems dur­ing the 1950-1970 era and co­coa pro­duc­tion went in­to what seemed to be an ir­re­versible de­cline.

How­ev­er, over the last cou­ple decades, there has been some­thing of a re­vival of the growth of co­coa with new es­tates and in­creas­ing num­bers of agro-in­dus­tri­al pro­duc­tion fac­to­ries be­ing es­tab­lished to cre­ate fin­ished prod­ucts for lo­cal con­sump­tion and ex­port. A few lo­cal com­pa­nies have in­deed bro­ken in­to for­eign mar­kets, with their brands be­com­ing ac­cept­ed by con­sumers.

A crit­i­cal need aris­es for the Gov­ern­ment and the lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor to take ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate ad­di­tion­al for­eign ex­change earn­ers; to en­er­gise the pro­duc­tion, mar­ket­ing and sale of lo­cal co­coa and fin­ished choco­late prod­ucts, es­pe­cial­ly in the cir­cum­stances of high­er prices on the mar­ket and greater de­mand, notwith­stand­ing the in­creased costs all around.

Two own­ers of co­coa es­tates, Eliz­a­beth Mon­tano and Yvette Gar­cia, are quot­ed in Sun­day’s Busi­ness Guardian as call­ing for ad­di­tion­al lands to be made avail­able to in­crease co­coa pro­duc­tion, both as raw ma­te­r­i­al and as a base for high-val­ue prod­ucts.

The Gov­ern­ment, be­ing the own­er of the vast ma­jor­i­ty of lands in the coun­try, has al­lowed for a sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ty of the re­source to lie fal­low and un­der-utilised. Such lands need to be opened up for lease and pur­chase in the present high-price man­i­fes­ta­tion of co­coa.

But as is well-known, high de­mand for prod­ucts fluc­tu­ates over time. The chal­lenge is for pro­duc­ers to be nim­ble with the rise and fall of de­mand for cer­tain com­modi­ties so that pro­duc­tion can be eas­i­ly and quick­ly shift­ed to mar­ket needs.

There is no tol­er­ance in the con­tem­po­rary world for the one-prod­uct agri­cul­ture of the 16th to 20th-cen­tu­ry mod­els. In such a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed pro­duc­tion space, the ex­pan­sion of the agro-in­dus­tri­al sec­tor will be­come at­trac­tive to in­vestors.

So yes, a re­turn to in­creased agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion but with a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence; it must be one that is ori­ent­ed to the needs of the lo­cal econ­o­my.

It must there­fore be the kind of agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment which is cog­nisant of the mod­ern econ­o­my which caters to both ex­port and lo­cal con­sump­tion, co­coa hav­ing every pos­si­bil­i­ty to meet both sets of tastes. The crit­i­cal fac­tor is proac­tiv­i­ty.