RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The high­ly nu­tri­tious Moru­ga Hill rice,—T&T’s on­ly in­dige­nous rice— is set to be ex­port­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly on a mass scale as farm­ers ramp up their pro­duc­tion on the hills of Moru­ga.

Dur­ing a func­tion in the rice-fields at the 13mm of the Pe­nal Rock Road in Moru­ga on Tues­day, the Moru­ga Rice co­op­er­a­tive led by agri-en­tre­pre­neur and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Caribbean Sea and Air mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny, Mark For­ge­nie re­ceived the promised $317,500 grant from Ex­portTT to de­vel­op the in­dus­try.

The grant was pre­sent­ed by Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat and Moru­ga MP Dr Lovell Fran­cis, a for­mer rice planter.

Fran­cis said the red­dish, choco­late flavoured Moru­ga Hill rice was brought to T&T from Africa 200 years ago by the Merikins West African slaves. As pay­ment for fight­ing for the British against the USA in the war of 1812, the Merikins were giv­en lands in Moru­ga, where they grew the beard­ed rice on the hills.

The strain was lost in the Unit­ed States and Fran­cis said Moru­ga is the on­ly place in the world where the rice is grown.

He said be­cause the rice is high in fi­bre and iron, the di­as­po­ra has de­vel­oped a taste for the rice which sells at $50 per pound. For­ge­nie has al­ready start­ed pack­ag­ing the sta­ple which is set to hit the shelves of se­lect gro­ceries across T&T in the near fu­ture.

Gopee-Scoon de­scribed the rice project as an ex­cit­ing ven­ture say­ing she was hap­py the rice was now be­ing com­mer­cialised to be sold on the world mar­ket.

Say­ing the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing with the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of the project, Gopee-Scoon said un­der the Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Fa­cil­i­ty (RDF), Gov­ern­ment has been sup­port­ing mi­cro, small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es in­clud­ing the Moru­ga Hill Rice co-op­er­a­tive.

“The RDF ad­vances the min­istry’s strate­gic ob­jec­tives of grow­ing and de­vel­op­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vices sec­tors,” she said.

Gopee-Scoon fur­ther com­mit­ted a $50,000 grant to­wards achiev­ing the ge­o­graph­i­cal in­di­ca­tion of the prod­uct. The min­is­ter added that she hoped to see the prod­uct on all su­per­mar­ket shelves and across the Caribbean, Eu­rope, Cana­da and the Unit­ed States.

For­ge­nie, who formed a co­op­er­a­tive to mar­ket the rice, said there were cur­rent­ly 120 farm­ers plant­i­ng an es­ti­mat­ed 300 acres of rice in Moru­ga.

He not­ed that the $375,500 grant will en­able more farm­ers to join the in­dus­try and reap fi­nan­cial re­wards. How­ev­er, he said land tenure was a prob­lem but with the ex­pan­sion of the rice in­dus­try, un­em­ployed youths in Moru­ga will now have em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Ramb­harat said he will deal with the is­sue of tenure on an eq­ui­table ba­sis. Ramb­harat ad­vised For­ge­nie not to try to com­pete with the par­boiled rice or white rice in­dus­try, adding that the Moru­ga Hill rice should re­main a niche prod­uct. He not­ed that the in­dus­try had po­ten­tial for suc­cess in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, adding that he was will­ing to work with the farm­ers to achieve this.

Ramb­harat al­so said that a new grant of up to $100,000 will be made avail­able to farm­ers.

“The new grant was ap­proved by the Cab­i­net weeks ago and be­fore Oc­to­ber 1, it will be for­mal­ly launched and will make a big dif­fer­ence on how good farm­ers op­er­ate,” Ramb­harat said.