With­in six months No­vo Life Farms is ex­pect­ed to break ground for a new agro-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Guyana with plans to al­so ex­pand in­to Suri­name.

The Trinidad-based man­u­fac­tur­er is look­ing at Guyana and Suri­name as the fu­ture bread bas­kets of the Caribbean.

The com­pa­ny wants to part­ner with farm­ers from the two South Amer­i­can coun­tries for the sup­ply of raw pro­duce as it seeks to in­crease pro­duc­tion and en­ter new mar­kets with its line of processed prod­ucts.

Last week, No­vo Life Farms’ Chair­man, Glen Ramd­hani signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with Guyana Of­fice of In­vest­ment to es­tab­lish and repli­cate a sim­i­lar agro-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Guyana to the one it has in Trinidad.

So why Guyana and Suri­name specif­i­cal­ly? Ramd­hani told the Busi­ness Guardian (BG) these two coun­tries are large and are blessed with rich, fer­tile land with vary­ing soil types that can grow a wide ar­ray of fruits and veg­eta­bles.

“Our vi­sion is where we see Guyana and Suri­name as the bread­bas­ket for the re­gion and Trinidad and To­ba­go as the pro­cess­ing and lo­gis­tics hub,” Ramd­hani ex­plained.

No­vo, which was found­ed four years ago spe­cialis­es in merg­ing tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion with agri­cul­ture to em­pow­er the lives of farm­ers to con­sumers and through­out the val­ue chain, he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Ramd­hani, No­vo has al­ready seen a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact since the launch of its agro-pro­cess­ing op­er­a­tions and has en­hanced the con­sumer ex­pe­ri­ence by rais­ing the stan­dards from pro­duc­tion to pack­ag­ing of its in­no­v­a­tive prod­ucts.

Its in­stant food line of prod­ucts un­der the brand “LIFE” in­clud­ing baigan and toma­to cho­ka, dhal, callaloo, pump­kin, sweet pota­to, cas­sa­va and dasheen fries, flour and pas­ta, among oth­er prod­ucts con­tin­ues to grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Ramd­hani said these prod­ucts were cre­at­ed for ex­port to the di­as­po­ra, how­ev­er, the lo­cal de­mand has been “phe­nom­e­nal.”

“Even ex­port de­mand is high. We are ex­pand­ing our pro­duc­tion for those prod­ucts to meet both lo­cal and ex­port de­mands and will soon have our first ship­ment to Cana­da and oth­er mar­kets.

“What we have done is in­fuse the fa­cil­i­ty with in­no­va­tion in every as­pect of the op­er­a­tion. The fa­cil­i­ty is da­ta dri­ven. Every de­ci­sion, pro­duc­tion, fore­cast­ing every­thing is dri­ven by our AI (ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence),” Ramd­hani said.

The com­pa­ny al­so us­es ro­bot­ics in some ar­eas to cre­ate ef­fi­cien­cy in pro­duc­tion and to main­tain high stan­dards from the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct to the pack­ag­ing,” Ramd­hani fur­ther ex­plained, adding that No­vo al­so has a ze­ro waste pol­i­cy as all as­pects of the fruits and veg­eta­bles are used in­to man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Laud­ing the ef­forts of lo­cal farm­ers, Ramd­hani said they have shown the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce and thus suf­fi­cient­ly sup­ply­ing the mar­ket as in the case of Gov­ern­ment’s food ham­per ini­tia­tive dur­ing the lock­down.

But pro­duc­ing in large quan­ti­ties re­mains chal­leng­ing.

“Our lo­cal farm­ers are ex­cel­lent at what they do, how­ev­er, when you are speak­ing of the large quan­ti­ties to sup­ply ex­port mar­kets you must think re­gion­al­ly...If we were to con­sume all that’s re­quired for ex­port from lo­cal mar­kets, it could re­sult in dis­rup­tions to the oth­er re­tail­ers and farm­ers’ mar­kets, that’s why Cari­com must be con­sid­ered,” Ramd­hani added.

How can lo­cal farm­ers in­crease pro­duc­tion?

Ac­cord­ing to Ramd­hani they need a mar­ket “will­ing to con­sume their har­vest” and once that is avail­able the farm­ers will con­tin­ue to be “good at what they do.”

Shar­ing his pas­sion for No­vo Life Farms Ramd­hani said it was his own life ex­pe­ri­ence which fu­elled the de­sire to pro­vide food to the na­tion.

“I re­mem­ber a time when we could not af­ford a prop­er gro­cery and had to cut and fit just so we can have ba­sic food, and this was dur­ing the eco­nom­ic boom in 2002 to 2008. While many were pros­per­ing, we were strug­gling,” he said, adding that his LIFE prod­ucts there­fore, cap­ture the very essence of his own jour­ney.

“It’s be­cause of that ex­pe­ri­ence in life and al­so to en­sure we as a re­gion are in con­trol of our own food; from farm­ing to pro­duc­tion and to the ta­bles of every home, re­gard­less of their eco­nom­ic stand­ing. Every one must and should be able to af­ford a healthy meal. That’s why our brand is called LIFE,” Ramd­hani added.

In de­tail­ing oth­er as­pects of the busi­ness op­er­a­tions he said No­vo is cur­rent­ly in phase one, which is agro-pro­cess­ing.

Its goal is to help build farm­ing ca­pac­i­ty by buy­ing and pro­duc­ing high qual­i­ty lo­cal­ly grown, lo­cal­ly made prod­ucts.

Phase two, he added, will be No­vo’s in­door farm which will on­ly grow crops farm­ers are un­able to pro­duce in­clud­ing for­eign pro­duce.

Ramd­hani said the com­pa­ny has al­ready se­cured the re­quired tech­nol­o­gy to re­li­ably grow a wide range of prod­ucts and con­sis­tent­ly de­liv­er to the mar­ket.

But how ex­pen­sive it is to em­ploy and up­keep high tech sys­tems in agri­cul­ture?

Ac­cord­ing to Ramd­hani this re­al­ly de­pends on the scale of op­er­a­tion, but he ad­mit­ted in­vest­ment can be sig­nif­i­cant.

Then there’s the cost as­so­ci­at­ed with up­grad­ing but this re­mains key to the vi­a­bil­i­ty of any op­er­a­tion.

“Main­tain­ing and up­dat­ing tech­nol­o­gy in a time­ly man­ner to min­imise cost­ly break­downs are im­por­tant. An­oth­er huge fac­tor is hav­ing the re­quired ex­per­tise. Once that is done, the re­turn is there,” Ramd­hani said.

While this may seem ex­pen­sive for the av­er­age farmer, Ramd­hani main­tained that the fu­ture of agri­cul­ture is tech­no­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven.

Hence, the fu­ture farmer will be equipped with a tablet to mon­i­tor crops, us­ing satel­lite to de­ter­mine soil con­di­tions and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to guide de­ci­sion-mak­ing, he said.

This will al­so en­able the sec­tor to grow and man­u­fac­ture a va­ri­ety of crop to en­able food se­cu­ri­ty. On a wider scale im­prov­ing the sec­tor means mak­ing fund­ing more eas­i­ly and read­i­ly avail­able.

Ramd­hani not­ed that while the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB) is “struc­tured very well” to sup­port the sec­tor with its low in­ter­est rates, which is ide­al for farm­ers and small­er size agro-proces­sors, there should be a sep­a­rate fund for larg­er projects.

He en­cour­aged Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue its ed­u­ca­tion dri­ve by host­ing more agri­ex­pos.

“This is go­ing to trans­late in­to build­ing cre­ativ­i­ty and dri­ving in­no­va­tion with­in the in­dus­try. Think of it like an agri­cul­tur­al ver­sion of CES (Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show),” Ramd­hani added.

So what’s next for No­vo?

Ramd­hani said the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to use in­no­va­tion to push the lim­its of agro-pro­cess­ing and food pro­duc­tion.

“You will con­tin­ue to see us pro­duce prod­ucts that are trans­for­ma­tion­al and game chang­ing,” he said, adding that the pri­ma­ry goal re­mains sup­ply­ing lo­cal­ly and build­ing the farm­ing ca­pac­i­ty.