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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Central cocoa farmers to export more beans

by

Shastri Boodan
2219 days ago
20190702
From left, president the Montserrat Hills Cocoa Farmers Cooperative Society Limited Christopher Paul shows a big cocoa to vice president Ronald Bhaggan and executive members Jude Lee Sam, Angela Tang Howad, Richard Murren and Diane Chinpire after the news conference.

From left, president the Montserrat Hills Cocoa Farmers Cooperative Society Limited Christopher Paul shows a big cocoa to vice president Ronald Bhaggan and executive members Jude Lee Sam, Angela Tang Howad, Richard Murren and Diane Chinpire after the news conference.

Shastri Boodan

Co­coa farm­ers in cen­tral Trinidad are ex­pect­ing to ex­port more of the valu­able beans this year.

The good news came from the Montser­rat Hills Co­coa Farm­ers Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Lim­it­ed at a news con­fer­ence held by the so­ci­ety in Gran Cou­va on Mon­day.

It took place on the com­pound of it’s choco­late mak­ing fa­cil­i­ties where the or­gan­i­sa­tion al­so an­nounced their up­com­ing Co­coa Fes­ti­val card­ed for this week­end.

Vice pres­i­dent of the co­op­er­a­tive Ronald Bhag­gan said the 42 farm­ers in the as­so­ci­a­tion are hop­ing to ex­port be­tween 40 to 60 tonnes this year when the sea­son starts in Oc­to­ber when com­pared to last year’s ex­port of 24 to 36 tonnes of the fine flavoured beans which can earn as much as $28,000 a tone.

Bhag­gan said this is part of the co­op­er­a­tive’s five-year plan to boost pro­duc­tion by 10 per cent an­nu­al­ly, re­ha­bil­i­tate old es­tates, raise prices, en­hance the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct and get more farm­ers in­volved in co­coa pro­duc­tion.

He said the co­op­er­a­tive al­so planned to en­cour­age down­stream pro­duc­tion where farm­ers can gen­er­ate val­ue added prod­ucts.

He said some of these prod­ucts such as choco­lates, cos­met­ics and oth­er food items in­fused with co­coa would be on dis­play at the food fes­ti­val on Sun­day at the La Ve­ga Es­tate.

Bhag­gan said on the down­side, the in­dus­try is los­ing val­ue farm­ing lands to hous­ing.

He said while labour re­mains a prob­lem the co­op­er­a­tive was able to hire some Ven­zeu­lan mi­grants as labour­ers.

How­ev­er, he said the in­dus­try re­mains cau­tious of hir­ing for­eign­ers be­cause of the preva­lence of the Frosty Pod dis­ease which could dev­as­tate the in­dus­try.

He said the dis­ease is trans­mit­ted by spores that can trav­el on the skin and cloth­ing of for­eign­ers.

He said should any­one from Venezuela bring the dis­ease to T&T it would dev­as­tate the in­dus­try.

Bhag­gan said there is a pe­ri­od of quar­an­tine that these in­di­vid­u­als must un­der­go be­fore they are al­lowed on es­tates.

He said the in­dus­try is al­so suf­fer­ing from a lack of ac­cess roads, wa­ter and the high cost of equip­ment.

About the fes­ti­val, Bhag­gan said it of­fers a boost for do­mes­tic tourism. He said last year’s event at­tract­ed over 2,000 vis­i­tors and this year the co­op­er­a­tive were ex­pect­ing more to at­tend. He said since then there has been an in­creased num­ber of per­sons who vis­it the es­tates.

Ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Di­ane Chin­pire said the food el­e­ment of the fes­ti­val promis­es to be ex­cit­ing. She said an ar­ray of cur­ry dish­es, meats and bev­er­ages would be in­fused with co­coa to demon­strate how the beans can add its own unique fla­vor to cook­ing.


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