NavDemCo and Agriculture in Trinidad and Tobago

Submitted by Taran on Mon, 08/11/2008 - 08:23

I've been busy over the last few weeks doing many things with land, from surveys to dealing with tenancy transfers to... believe it or not, planting corn. The latter was probably the most educational and allowed for the most enjoyment for me.

There is nothing quite like waking up early in the morning, going into an area, clearing grass out and preparing the land to plant corn. But it is not simple, and it comes at a cost. It's the costs that are important for this entry, as farmers in the area - and around the world - contend with the costs. Weedicides. Pesticides. Fertilizer. Seeds (which for corn are fairly cheap), and finding the right seeds. Time spent looking after the crops. Farming requires more sweat equity than anything else, but it certainly does require a bit of money to start. It isn't something that necessarily brings a lot of return on investment because while the prices of vegetables and fruits fluctuate depending on the market, the costs of the tools of the trade only increase.

National Agriculture and Marketing Development Corporation

Enter National Agriculture and Marketing Development Corporation (NavDemCo), who I intially met in the 2005 Trade and Investment Convention. They've been in the South Oropouche area and offering their services to farmers so that they can export. I wondered why veteran farmers who I know in the area were not exporting, and I got some interesting answers.

All the answers had common parts. First, NavDemCo doesn't pay when the produce arrives - instead, they pay the farmers when the produce ships. For small farmers, this simply doesn't work well because they need a return on their investment so that they can plant their next crops - and also so that they can eat. Larger farmers have a different issue - whether the produce that they send to NavDemCo meets certain standards for export and whether the produce is in immediate demand. Think of this: when a vegetable is picked, it continues to grow, some more than others. A vegetable that is the right size now may be the wrong size in a day.

So, for all of these things, the farmers I have spoken with have pretty much discarded the notion of NavDemCo. It just doesn't work for them. Because of the horror stories I have heard, and my own sweat equity in my own crops, I am unlikely to consider NavDemCo.

Could that all be fixed? I think so. How? I don't know enough about the insides of NavDemCo to really comment anything of value - but I can say that on the farmer's end, it isn't as attractive as it could be.

Trinidad and Tobago certainly has enough produce for export, though how much is something I am uncertain of. But the smaller farmers - the majority of farmers - do not wish to gamble with their equity. And why should they?

Taran's blog

Navigating away from NAMDEVCO.

Submitted by kid5rivers (not verified) on Thu, 08/14/2008 - 08:12.

I worked for a few years (early 1070s) with NAMDEVCO's precursor: The Central Marketing Agency (CMA). CMA owned a subsidiary entity named Sunisle Corporation (beautiful name and possessed of a beautiful logo) which aggressively pursued export markets for T&T's agri-, horti- and aqua- cultural produce. The aggression paid off in that ready, willing and regular purchasers were found in the UK, Venezuela, Canada, USA eastern seaboard and continental Europe.

Thus, twice per week, BWIA flights (sometimes Caricargo as well) would haul containers/crates of callalloo bush, ochroes, peppers, chives, bandanya, crabs, cascadoux, dasheen, yams and,when in season, mangoes, sapodillas, plums, sour cherries, puteegals, sugar apples and pigeon peas, as well as processed foodstuff such as creole chocolate, jams, jellies, preserves, pepper sauces and opther condiments and, anthuriums, orchids and heliconia.

Sunisle even facilitated our northerly neighbours: Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, who sent their mauby and aniseed, nutmegs and limes via windjammer once weekly, for transhipment, at a profitable price.

To do all this, CMA hired and maintained a cadre of Eastern Caribbean Institute of Agriculture and Forestry (ECIAF)-trained purchasing officers and technical advisors; they guys and gals liaised with farmers in the field. CMA also instituted a guaranteed price system, which comforted producers in time of glut, such as occurred in 1973, when favourable weather caused an overabundant cabbage harvest.

The cabbage excess episode indicated the one downfall of CMA's operations, or, rather, of the Ministry of Agriculture's Reasearch and Development Division: there was no structured, scientific analysis being done as to what, when and how much the farmers were planting, information vital to thereafter advising them what, when and how much to plant in future. Which was most surprising, since, as I said, CMA was aggressively and successfully finding overseas markets for the available produce. The long and short of it was that, consequently and habitually, farmers switched from the one crop type to the next, whenever the last export price of the next crop exceeded the price of the one they had just reaped.

In hindsight, then, it was inevitable that CMA's efforts would eventually peter out; and peter out it did.

Which brings us to its successor, your NAMDEVCO, about which I know little, other than that those in charge of it have put up (at Macoyea intersection on the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway) a garish, multi-milion dollar, double-screen electronic board that gives us the score on the wholesale prices (selling, not buying) of agricultural goods available at its neighbouring Macoya Wholsesale Facility; as if to suggest that all passing vehicles are operated by persons hunting to buy ochroes and tomatoes by the crate.

Sigh! 2020? "In ah timing!" as the youths say.