SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dral@ya­hoo.com

Food crop farmer, Aaron Bap­tiste, quote to live by is: “A man with no vi­sion for his fu­ture al­ways re­turns to his past.”

He has been in­volved in agri­cul­ture all of his life and de­scribes him­self as “well-root­ed and hand­some­ly-blos­somed hav­ing grown up with my par­ents, who were heav­i­ly en­gaged in farm­ing and plant­i­ng as a side busi­ness.”

He de­clared: “Agri­cul­ture is my thing! Through help­ing out at home and lat­er on work­ing for oth­er farm­ers, I gained a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge that al­lowed me to thrive well, di­rect­ing me to go in­to agri­cul­ture on my own.

“I have been proud­ly plant­i­ng my own crops and rar­ing an­i­mals and de­spite sev­er­al set­backs along the way, I kept fo­cus on my vi­sion and pressed on as I un­der­stand that my role in agri­cul­ture, though small, is im­por­tant.

“While I have oth­er means through which I can earn in­come, I was al­ways able to re­ly on agri­cul­ture to sup­port my fam­i­ly. When all else couldn’t make ends meet, I was able to fall back on farm­ing in or­der to pro­vide for my fam­i­ly and pay bills. Food will al­ways sell be­cause peo­ple need food to live.”

Bap­tiste said he is com­fort­able in his ca­reer choice be­cause even if his pro­duce doesn’t sell, his fam­i­ly will al­ways have food to eat.

“My pro­duce has fed my fam­i­ly and oth­ers so many times, this is why agri­cul­ture is very im­por­tant to me,” he said.

He said his in­ter­est in farm­ing be­gan when he bought and reared chick­ens as a boy.

He re­called: “I took pride in plant­i­ng a lit­tle bit of let­tuce and any lit­tle thing I could put my hands on be­cause I al­ways liked to try some­thing new.”

Even when faced with set­backs such as bad weath­er, crop dis­ease, lar­ce­ny and low prices, he press­es on, con­vinced that farm­ing is his dream job.

For stu­dents who be­lieve they can­not make it in school, Bap­tiste said agri­cul­ture is a way out.

“I at­tend­ed Curepe Ju­nior Sec­ondary and St Au­gus­tine Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive School but un­for­tu­nate­ly, I nei­ther com­plet­ed school nor stud­ied agri­cul­ture. Dur­ing those years, nonethe­less, I en­gaged in agri­cul­ture per­son­al­ly in my free time but it did not have any con­nec­tions with my school life. I at­tend­ed to my crops on af­ter­noons and week­ends.

“The first ma­jor crop I plant­ed on my own was cu­cum­ber. Along with this, I built a pen to rear ducks. From that first har­vest, I start­ed to sell ducks. I was suc­cess­ful, and this mo­ti­vat­ed me to con­tin­ue in agri­cul­ture,” he said.

“Be­cause of my busi­ness struc­ture, I do not have any per­ma­nent work­ers as yet, but I em­ploy two to three dai­ly-paid work­ers at a time when need­ed. The work­ers, who in­clude Venezue­lans at times, are not al­ways the same in­di­vid­u­als. It de­pends on who’s avail­able.”

Bap­tiste, who won a Farmer of the Week end­ing June 26, said he felt ho­n­oured to have met the mem­ber of par­lia­ment for his area, who toured his gar­den and com­mend­ed him.

He said he wel­comes field trips to his gar­den. “The farm and gar­den pro­vide a safe and se­cure en­vi­ron­ment, where peo­ple in­clud­ing chil­dren, can com­fort­ably vis­it, in­ves­ti­gate, ask ques­tions, dis­cov­er and learn a lot about agri­cul­ture.

“I’m cur­rent­ly work­ing on im­prov­ing the in­fra­struc­ture to pro­vide seat­ing, shel­ter and wash­room ac­com­mo­da­tions, as well as en­hanc­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties,” he said.

Bap­tiste’s crops in­clude: toma­toes, pi­men­tos, me­l­on­gene and cu­cum­bers and he urges cit­i­zens to eat lo­cal, eat healthy, live longer.