Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

In T&T, where agri­cul­ture and sus­tain­abil­i­ty in­ter­sect with cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty, one woman is lead­ing a move­ment that re­de­fines how we view food waste.

Louisea John-Browne, an ad­vo­cate for eco-friend­ly prac­tices, is in­spir­ing a new gen­er­a­tion to em­brace com­post­ing and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture. Through her or­gan­i­sa­tion, In­crease Kids Agro World, she is not on­ly ed­u­cat­ing chil­dren and moth­ers on the im­por­tance of re­duc­ing food waste but al­so trans­form­ing dis­card­ed scraps in­to valu­able re­sources for the en­vi­ron­ment.

John-Browne’s pas­sion for agri­cul­ture was deeply root­ed in her up­bring­ing. Raised in a close-knit fam­i­ly with four sib­lings, she was great­ly in­flu­enced by her fa­ther, a ma­son with a strong love for farm­ing. Her moth­er, a ded­i­cat­ed nurse, in­stilled in her a deep sense of care and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. This blend of nur­tur­ing and re­silience shaped her vi­sion and led her to es­tab­lish In­crease Kids Agro World nine years ago.

What be­gan as a small ini­tia­tive fo­cused on cul­ti­vat­ing crops like plan­tains grad­u­al­ly evolved in­to some­thing greater. Just be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, John-Browne shift­ed her ef­forts to­wards ed­u­ca­tion, host­ing agri­cul­ture camps and train­ing ses­sions for chil­dren. As young minds learned how to plant and care for crops, their moth­ers be­came in­volved as well, re­in­forc­ing the idea that agri­cul­tur­al knowl­edge should be passed down through gen­er­a­tions.

As a moth­er of two, John-Browne em­braced the role of a ‘mom­pre­neur’—an en­tre­pre­neur bal­anc­ing busi­ness with moth­er­hood—by in­volv­ing her daugh­ters in her work. This per­son­al con­nec­tion be­came the dri­ving force be­hind her mis­sion.

“I want­ed them to see what I do first-hand and be part of it. In show­ing them, I thought—why not show oth­er chil­dren? Why not show oth­er moth­ers? And that’s when every­thing tru­ly took off,” John-Browne shared.

This dri­ve led to the evo­lu­tion of her or­gan­i­sa­tion, ex­pand­ing from sim­ply teach­ing agri­cul­ture to tack­ling one of the world’s biggest en­vi­ron­men­tal prob­lems, food waste.

Two years ago, John-Browne launched a com­post­ing ini­tia­tive, host­ing camps to teach chil­dren and women how to com­post food waste. This ef­fort soon grew in­to a larg­er mis­sion by col­lect­ing food waste from su­per­mar­kets and ven­dors, break­ing it down, and con­vert­ing it in­to fer­tilis­er.

“Our goal is to as­sist the Caribbean in achiev­ing ze­ro food waste. Now, there are many ways to achieve this, like buy­ing less, eat­ing all of your food, and not throw­ing it away, but we are fo­cused pri­mar­i­ly on the com­post­ing as­pect to re­duce food waste. We are hop­ing that as we teach peo­ple, and as we do it on our own to com­post, that this will help in achiev­ing ze­ro food waste, which a lot of peo­ple don’t even know is a prob­lem, but it is a ma­jor prob­lem that faces the world be­cause it leads to pol­lu­tion. This is what we are hop­ing to achieve—a vast re­duc­tion in food waste,” she said.

De­spite her suc­cess, John-Browne faces sev­er­al chal­lenges.

“Some of the main chal­lenges would be the labour be­cause it is a lot of work to col­lect, then to re­cy­cle the food waste, so it is a lot of la­bo­ri­ous work. That’s one. Then an­oth­er chal­lenge is ed­u­cat­ing the fol­low­ers and the gen­er­al pub­lic on the need to re­duce food waste,” John-Browne ex­plained.

Al­though she faces these chal­lenges, through per­se­ver­ance and sup­port from her hus­band, Dar­rell John-Browne, she re­mains com­mit­ted to her mis­sion.

“I have an end goal: to achieve a cen­tralised au­to­mat­ic com­post­ing mod­el farm in Trinidad and To­ba­go. When I say that, I mean a place where we can col­lect most, if not all, of the food waste gen­er­at­ed in a cen­tralised area with an au­to­mat­ed sys­tem that can now con­vert the food waste. When I say a mod­el farm, it means that on that farm we would have se­lect­ed plants that we are now us­ing our very own com­post on to show the ben­e­fits of the com­post and al­so sell­ing the prod­uct. So, that is my even­tu­al end, and that’s what keeps me go­ing amidst all of these chal­lenges,” she said.

Un­til then, In­crease Kids Agro World con­tin­ues its ef­forts, col­lect­ing food waste, ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic, and run­ning school pro­grammes to teach chil­dren about com­post­ing. The or­gan­i­sa­tion is al­so work­ing to­wards ac­quir­ing land to ex­pand its op­er­a­tions on a larg­er scale.

For John-Browne, this mis­sion is about mak­ing a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to T&T.

“I want to be a game-chang­er in Trinidad and To­ba­go. I want my name to be the GOAT, the go-to for where com­post­ing food waste and what­not is con­cerned,” she said.

With her un­wa­ver­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion and pas­sion, John-Browne is prov­ing that even waste can be turned in­to some­thing valu­able, both for the en­vi­ron­ment and for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.