Gone are the days of the thriving sugarcane plantations in T&T but one local farmer is hoping to maintain some semblance of the industry.
Romulus Ramoutar and his wife Indira come from generations of sugarcane labourers.
Unknown to many, this man and wife agribusiness team is the last surviving private sugarcane farmers who supplied Caroni (1975) Ltd and still earn a living on its production and processing after the industry was closed in 2003.
Toiling endlessly on his five acre field is therefore second nature to Ramoutar.
“My wife and myself both came from the Caroni era planting sugarcane. I was born into the industry because my father and grandfathers were sugarcane farmers and sold the cane to Caroni.
“I was contracted at Caroni at around 18 years and on the closure of the industry I went into some vegetable farming that failed very badly in 2010 with the floods. Then I got into juice production and I continued with the sugarcane,” Ramoutar said.
Ramoutar began his small business by crushing the cane and then selling the juice at the various local farmers’ markets.
However, he has now taken it one step ahead by brewing sugarcane vinegar, a product which he hopes will successfully kick-off at the supermarkets.
In explaining his business venture, Ramoutar said to avoid loss from wildfires, he does not replant his cane all at once as it takes about one year for sugarcane to fully mature before harvesting.
“When it burns down in ten minutes that’s a whole year of production lost so it’s not wise to replant all at once,” Ramoutar said, adding that thousands of dollars are lost in the process.
However, one fateful day when his field was burnt— Ramoutar believed the fire was deliberately set—that burnt cane was the beginning of his sugarcane vinegar business.
“The business started off when people burnt down my canefield. I didn’t have anything to sell because I couldn’t use the cane. So I started to crush the cane and put it into a tank to go to vinegar,” Ramoutar explained.
And the rest is history.
The sugarcane vinegar itself takes a while to come to fruition as Ramoutar’s first batch took two years but he’s hoping to perfect his recipe to achieve a quicker turnover.
“I want to take my business to the next level to have the vinegar available in supermarkets. More quantity means increased space and storage like tanks which I’m currently working on,” Ramoutar explained.
He is currently finalising proper labelling to ensure his sugarcane vinegar meets all the necessary requirements by the Food and Drug Administration.
A 750 ml bottle of vinegar currently sells at $30 and a 300 ml bottle cost $15, all of which are manufactured at Ramoutar’s home.
Cane vinegar is most popular in the Philippines, in particular the Ilocos Region of the northern Philippines (where it is called sukang iloko).
Buenas sugarcane vinegar— also known as sukang iloko—is a mild but distinctive vinegar in Filipino cuisine.
It’s often used to make sweet and sour sauces and it’s made from fermented sugarcane juice, a process that makes the finished vinegar more sour than sweet, tasting like a lightly vinegared apple juice.
Sugarcane potential
According to the Caricom’s website, a Caribbean that was once covered in sugarcane now only has four countries remaining in significant production, Belize, Jamaica, Guyana and Barbados.
Pure Foods Distilled White Cane Vinegar which is a product of Jamaica retails around £6.99 on eBay.
Omardath Maharaj, agricultural economist, noted that the development and marketing of Ramoutar’s sugarcane vinegar sets an interesting tone for an industry which over the years became the subject of ridicule and acrimony by politicians whose own decision making and mismanagement would have decimated its potential.
Maharaj noted that in 2017, much like several years prior, the top five food import categories accounted for approximately 45 per cent of the country’s total food imports.
These include dairy produce; eggs; natural honey; edible products of animal origin ($712.8 million or 12.35 per cent), meat and edible meat offal ($555.5 million or 9.62 per cent), beverages, spirits and vinegar ($443.9 million or 7.69 per cent), miscellaneous edible preparations ($428.8 million or 7.43 per cent) and cereals ($420.5 million or 7.28 per cent).
Maharaj said over the last five years T&T has imported well over $60 million in cider, vinegar and other fermented mixtures (non-alcoholic) which is still minute in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars spent to import cane and other sugars and artificial sweeteners.
“When we think of sugarcane in Trinidad, despite billions of dollars over the years, we have an image similar to a broom handle in our minds,” Maharaj said, noting that when he visited India’s sugarcane fields in 2018 the cane itself was as thick and tall as a length of bamboo.
He said India’s SME production and processing is delinked from State involvement and “big sugar” prospects adding that the downstream potential was seen in juices and various preparation including jams and jellies, jaggery, molasses, processed sugarcane bagasse into ornamental plant mulch or fuel for non-LPG cooking.
Maharaj said growers in India are marginal in terms of their land holdings and even then, not all of their less than two acre parcels had a sugarcane enterprise.
“It is grown as any other fruit or vegetable and appreciated for its processed potential or fresh consumption. Through the application of the research of the Indian Institute of Sugarcane Research in Lucknow and other collaborative bases, farmers have long gone ahead of the troubles faced by their counterparts in T&T decades ago,” Maharaj said.
He said with the maintenance of several varieties favouring different growing conditions, aridity and soil types; farmers are encouraged to maintain the crop.
The Institute also maintains genetic stocks for high sugar and other properties as well as developing a range of technologies to advance the industry. These include early maturing varieties, planting techniques including appropriate ratoon management and irrigation, appropriate mechanisation, business plans for inter-cropping with potato, mustard, wheat among others as well as frontally addressing management of a plethora of pests and diseases.
Maharaj advised that T&T must strategically identify which types of products it plans to wean off, then sustainable industry development plans for the expanded production of the main inputs to the allied industries with fixed targets while creating employment and value addition in the local economy.
