David Pacchioli
Team Cocoa
Join a team of Penn State researchers and our own intrepid reporter in Trinidad as they kick off "Plants Without Borders," a project aimed at sharing some of the latest technology for growing one of the world's favorite crops—cocoa. During ten days in-country, associate professor of plant molecular biology Mark Guiltinan and his team plan to build a greenhouse for raising cocoa seedlings, complete with irrigation system. They will also give a workshop in cocoa-propagation techniques for local farmers, meet with scientists from the country's Ministry of Agriculture, and visit one of the world's largest cocoa seed-banks. Associate editor Dave Pacchioli, accompanying the team, plans to send back real-time dispatches on their progress.
Dispatch 1: Getting There
Woke up this morning to the smell of curry. Roopchand's wife Sheri was making breakfast—curried chickpeas (channa) and flatbread (roti)—which we all ate greedily, along with blood-red papaya and mangoes, which Sheri taught us to peel with our teeth.
Curry for breakfast
We left University Park at 8:00 a.m. Tuesday and arrived in Port-of-Spain after midnight, along with three boxes of drip irrigation equipment that all managed to weigh in under the customs limit. Roopchand was waiting at the airport gate, with a broad smile and a sign that said "Welcome Penn State." Then it was on to the last leg, by 13-seat Maxi-Taxi to Mayaro, where we are staying in a rented house. We traveled east and then south the length of the island, heads bobbing, trying to adjust to being on the left side of the road. Much of the southern route was along the water's edge, with coconut palms silhouetted black against a moonlit sky and bone-pale ocean. Somewhere along the way our headlights caught a flattened snake stretched across most of the two-lane. We arrived at about 2:30, mosquito-netted the beds, and finally fell into them an hour later.
The house is 100 meters from the beach, where at dawn (so I have heard), fishermen gather at the blast of a conch shell to heave their boats beyond the breakers and put out. Later I saw others drawing hand seines through shallow water.
Roopchand and Sheri's farm is half an hour from the house, over serpentine roads through thick forest and scattered settlements. This morning, in daylight, we caught glimpses of what we couldn't see at night: the small farms, with their water cisterns and tethered goats, the hodge podge of roadside fruit stands, small eateries, and gas stations, the uniformed children walking from school. Signs everywhere hark a piquant masala (a mix) of cultures: East Indian, Chinese, Muslim, Rastafarian, and British. "Pudding and souse" are advertised next to "hot roti" and "Chip chip for sale." (There is also a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Mayaro.)
David Pacchioli
First look at the greenhouse
Outside one house was a cocoa drying apparatus. It looked something like a shallow-pitched dog house on tracks, the better to pull back and forth. The beans are spread out on a steel bed to dry in the sun. The retractable roof allows quick coverage during the frequent rains. We've had a handful of cloudbursts already, having arrived here with the rainy season, but they pass quickly.
The showers have, however, made a bit of a muck of the greenhouse site, which was the first place we stopped this morning. The good news is that, anticipating the delays of the season, Roopchand and his crew here have got a good head start, framing out the structure and building a couple of cement-block propagation beds. Helping to lay the groundwork for our arrival, too, were Diana Fillhart of Brooklyn, NY, and Jeanne Peters of Ulysses, PA, two volunteers affiliated with the Coudersport (PA) Alliance Church, Candi's church back home. The first order of construction business, then, is to stretch some plastic across the roof frame, and spread some gravel across the floor, both to facilitate working through the rains. Before that, however, we're going to stop in at the Ministry of Agriculture.
Dispatch 2: Local Practice
Woke up this morning to the smell of curry. Roopchand's wife Sheri was making breakfast—curried chickpeas (channa) and flatbread (roti)—which we all ate greedily, along with blood-red papaya and mangoes, which Sheri taught us to peel with our teeth.
Talking with Davion Ali at the Demonstration Station
We left University Park at 8:00 a.m. Tuesday and arrived in Port-of-Spain after midnight, along with three boxes of drip irrigation equipment that all managed to weigh in under the customs limit. Roopchand was waiting at the airport gate, with a broad smile and a sign that said "Welcome Penn State." Then it was on to the last leg, by 13-seat Maxi-Taxi to Mayaro, where we are staying in a rented house. We traveled east and then south the length of the island, heads bobbing, trying to adjust to being on the left side of the road. Much of the southern route was along the water's edge, with coconut palms silhouetted black against a moonlit sky and bone-pale ocean. Somewhere along the way our headlights caught a flattened snake stretched across most of the two-lane. We arrived at about 2:30, mosquito-netted the beds, and finally fell into them an hour later.
The house is 100 meters from the beach, where at dawn (so I have heard), fishermen gather at the blast of a conch shell to heave their boats beyond the breakers and put out. Later I saw others drawing hand seines through shallow water.
Roopchand and Sheri's farm is half an hour from the house, over serpentine roads through thick forest and scattered settlements. This morning, in daylight, we caught glimpses of what we couldn't see at night: the small farms, with their water cisterns and tethered goats, the hodge podge of roadside fruit stands, small eateries, and gas stations, the uniformed children walking from school. Signs everywhere hark a piquant masala (a mix) of cultures: East Indian, Chinese, Muslim, Rastafarian, and British. "Pudding and souse" are advertised next to "hot roti" and "Chip chip for sale." (There is also a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Mayaro.)
David Pacchioli
Roopchand Black, Cocoa Farmer
Outside one house was a cocoa drying apparatus. It looked something like a shallow-pitched dog house on tracks, the better to pull back and forth. The beans are spread out on a steel bed to dry in the sun. The retractable roof allows quick coverage during the frequent rains. We've had a handful of cloudbursts already, having arrived here with the rainy season, but they pass quickly.
The showers have, however, made a bit of a muck of the greenhouse site, which was the first place we stopped this morning. The good news is that, anticipating the delays of the season, Roopchand and his crew here have got a good head start, framing out the structure and building a couple of cement-block propagation beds. Helping to lay the groundwork for our arrival, too, were Diana Fillhart of Brooklyn, NY, and Jeanne Peters of Ulysses, PA, two volunteers affiliated with the Coudersport (PA) Alliance Church, Candi's church back home. The first order of construction business, then, is to stretch some plastic across the roof frame, and spread some gravel across the floor, both to facilitate working through the rains. Before that, however, we're going to stop in at the Ministry of Agriculture.
Dispatch 3: Hard Work on a Holiday
Thursday morning
Arrived at the greenhouse site this morning at 8:30, after a stop at Sugar's Hardware to look for clamps to hold the roof plastic. Today is a holiday, Corpus Christi, but Sugar's and some other places are open. Along the way we passed a crossroads where a new concrete bridge is in mid-construction, next to the existing iron span. What looked like 75 men milled at the corner, with a couple of gangly, gray-uniformed police. Apparently these men were hoping for work. Unemployment is high here; over 40 percent among young men, I've read. The lack of jobs has contributed to a rise in crime.
David Pacchioli
aying plastic and gravel for greenhouse floor
At the site, the team quickly kicked into gear: heavy labor this morning. First, smoothing the red-clay sub-floor, (which was wet but not puddled) then laying black plastic over top, then a layer of white gravel over that for good drainage. Wheelbarrow loads of gravel, shoveled, carted, dumped and graded—by 9:30 most were red-faced and drenched with sweat. (Siela: "I knew there was a reason why I got a Ph.D.") Drinking lots of water, and slathering lots of DEET and sunblock. Making good progress, too; even though a downpour halted things for 15 minutes, by 11 the floor was done.
A trio of scrawny puppies keeps us company, shy of attention and keeping to the shade of the old house that fronts the greenhouse. There's a phone here, and with luck and a local phone card, I might be able to send this dispatch from here. That's assuming everything works perfectly, however; and for the first transmission (from a house in town after several other options failed) that wasn't the case.
David Pacchioli
Leveling the floor with sand for proper drainage
Mohan brought lunch in the Maxi, and I rode back with him to fetch a piece of equipment. On the way he scouted roadside stands for the ripest gummy shells and silk figs (varieties of banana), and for pineapples for tomorrow's breakfast. We passed small boys selling clutches of crabs, a long funeral procession, and a parade that had stopped traffic for a quarter mile in the opposite direction: a children's brass band followed by 200 singing people in their finest outfits, shading themselves with umbrellas from the midday sun. Two elderly ladies, tired of going on foot, flagged Mohan for a ride. One of them asked me what I was doing there, and I tried to explain about building a greenhouse. "But we already got cocoa in Trinidad," she said. They're trying to improve varieties and get a better yield, Mohan said, and I said something about protecting tender young plants. From hard rain and the brutal sun. She only frowned. "Every-ting every time got to be modern," she said.
Back at the site the team had started assembling the irrigation system, reconfiguring where necessary as they went.
Dispatch 4: Running Water
David Pacchioli
Nick and Candi help set up the misting system
The big accomplishment of Thursday, after the gut-busting labor of finishing the floor, was getting the misting system installed. Using a lot of black plastic tubing, a small submersible sump pump, and a plastic tool-box outfitted with timers and controls, the team created an inexpensive ($200) and efficient system to draw water from the three large cisterns behind Roopchand's house, which hold the rainwater he collects from his roof. The line feeds misting sprinklers that are spaced the length of the twin propagation beds, where cocoa cuttings will be started in a sandy mix. Misting, Mark says, is a key element in propagating cuttings, because these shoots initially have no roots. After thirty days of nurturing in the moist, protected beds, they grow enough root to be transplanted into soil-filled bags and set on benches at the other end of the greenhouse, to grow and harden for another two months or so before they are ready to be planted outside.
At 3:30, everything was set for a test. Someone threw the switch and soon two sets of five sprinklers were misting beautifully, creating small rainbows in the sunlight. "I'm relieved," Carter told me later. "I've set up systems like this at home, but I had my doubts. It works just fine." Still, he said, this is only the first step. The second, a drip irrigation system for watering the bagged seedlings, will be tougher. It will require a water pressure of 12-15 psi, piddling compared to the 40 psi gush of American taps, but not so easy for a little bit of gravity and a small pump. It would take a 30-foot column of water—twice again the height of Roopchand's elevated tanks & to achieve that pressure by gravity alone.
Mark makes the final connections to bring running water to the house
The real triumph today, judging from reactions, was that by adding a single T-connector and a bit of extra tubing to the greenhouse line Mark and the crew were able to bring running water into the Baschk house—up to the second floor, where the living quarters are. After eight years of lugging buckets up the stairs, the sight of water flowing from her kitchen tap brought Sheri to tears.
Dispatch 5: Turtle Diary
Thursday at dinner, Roopchand and Mohan told us about a nearby beach that is a nesting site for giant sea turtles. For two weeks in June, these great creatures come ashore, at night, to lay and bury their eggs. A friend, Roopchand said, had reported seeing one the night before last.
In spite of the day's labors, a decision was made to mount an expedition. At 10 we left for the beach the turtles favor: it is short and steep at high tide, which allows for a briefer stay on land where a sea turtle is in harm's way. After a short ride and then bouncing a half-mile down a dark rutted road we parked and walked through a farmyard scattered with palm trees and sleeping chickens to get to the beach. For some time we combed in both directions, walking quietly under an inky, star-filled sky, the lights of off-shore oil rigs on the horizon. "This has the flavor of a snipe hunt," Mark whispered at one point. But finally, directly in front of the large, wind-bowed palm that marked the end of the designated beach we spotted her - the huge, high-humped shell, front-to-back at least four feet, the football-sized head, the flat-paddle legs flailing. She was wedged in the foot-deep trench she had dug, throwing back sand to cover—and up to 15-feet beyond.
We stood our distance to give her room, stunned by the size and power of this magnificent animal and moved, too, by the force of her instinct. After a few precious minutes, when she was finished her burying, she paused, executed a 180-degree turn with three great shifts of her bulk, and lurched rapidly back down the beach. Hitting the water she went amphibian, and vanished quickly into the surf.
Candi, speaking for all, kept saying, "Awesome!" all the way back to the van. But whether from awe or simple exhaustion, nobody said a word on the drive back to the house.
Note: No picture, because we didn't want to terrify the poor turtle with flashbulbs.
Dispatch 6: Road Trip
Nick Willis
Coconut harvesters at work
Fast-food Trinidad-style: "doubles" from a popular shack in downtown Mayaro. Doubles are fry bread ladled with a sauce of chickpeas, cilantro, and hot pepper. You get two (at a time) on a piece of wax paper. Eating them is tricky—mostly it's fold and shove 'em in your mouth, then mop up what you dropped—but they sure taste good.
This was breakfast, eaten on the fly because we needed an early start: the plan was to drive to La Reunion to visit the propagation station there, then on to Port of Spain to buy materials. If we met success and got back by mid-afternoon, there would be a few hours of light to start on the roof.
Driving up the coast we passed through a palm plantation, where a team of three workers was climbing trees and cutting down bunches of coconuts. We stopped and they treated us to some of the fresh milk, neatly clipping the top off each coconut with a couple of sharp machete strokes.
David Pacchioli
At the propagation station in La Reunion
In La Reunion, in the north central part of the island, we toured the government station that propagates cocoa, citrus, avocado, and exotic fruits like pommerac—something like a very crisp, tart apple. We spoke with Ian Muhammad about local practice. One thing striking was the amount of empty space in the facility: much of the aging greenhouse area is not being used. Yet even while we were there, three farmers came in looking for plants and were turned away. A nurseryman told Carter they had about 30 requests per day, and there's a waiting list. So they aren't making enough plants to fill the demand, which seems curious, since the government is subsidizing cocoa farmers so heavily.
Roopchand's greenhouse, once established, could help to fill that demand—and be for him a profitable side business some day. Although it would on the face of it be hard for him to match the subsidized price for rooted cuttings, he could take advantage of the inconvenience of waiting and the fact that farmers in Mayaro have to pay transport to get plants from the north. He could be a local provider.
It's a complicated economy that runs in cycles. "When cocoa prices rise," Mark says, "people want to grow it. Then the market gets flooded, prices drop, and people abandon the farms. Then demand increases again, and people want to grow it again."
After we left the station, the afternoon turned into a scavenger hunt as we scoured the hot and smoggy city for roof plastic and other items unobtainable in Mayaro. We didn't get back until 5:00. Changed clothes and went out to the site even though there wasn't much light left. "It's a symbolic thing," Mark said. "I don't want a day to go by that we haven't worked on the greenhouse."
Dispatch 7: Road Trip
David Pacchioli
Working late, making clamps
Featured in this morning's island Newsday, read outside the Doubles Man's shack: a story about striking nurses who, in an attempt to force higher wages, released a bunch of frogs in the local hospital. ("Hoppin' Mad Nurses," was the headline.)
Last night's short trip to the site revealed a couple of problems, one with the roof plan and one with the drip system. As a result of the first, Mark, Roopchand, Candi and Nick worked until bedtime sawing and fashioning 45 metal clamps out of aluminum and bolts. As a result of the second, Carter spent this morning digging a four-foot-round hole five-feet deep in the hard clay.
The check valve the team had planned to install to prevent unwanted dripping from the raised cisterns hadn't worked, he explained. Without it, the current set-up resembled a siphon, which would drain the tanks in a few days. The solution was to eliminate gravity by placing the lead tank down at sprinkler level, and depending completely on the pumps. That meant putting two thirds of the tank below ground.
David Pacchioli
Attaching shade cloth
So Carter put his back into it. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew attacked the roof, a hot job on a cloudless day. A layer of plastic under a layer of shade cloth would cut the sun's penetration by over half. Combined with the misting and drip, this open shaded area would theoretically be cool enough for tender plants and still sunny enough for them to grow. Using a similar set-up (albeit indoors) in University Park, Carter, the greenhouse master, has achieved 90 percent rooting success. By comparison, the practice at the station at La Reunion, which closes the plants in tight bins to retain moisture and relies on much heavier shade to keep things cool, loses 40 percent of its cuttings.
By noon, the front half of the greenhouse was covered. The second half would go quicker, Roopchand said, since the first was training. That turned out to be wishful thinking. Still, by 4:00 the roof was finished. Sun-dried and exhausted, the whole crew headed for the beach.
Nick Willis
Carter in the hole
Dispatch 8: Making Contact
The other day I asked Roopchand and Candi for details about how this project got off the ground. It's an interesting story.
Last year Roopchand and Sheri traveled to the States seeking help for Christian, their oldest son, who needed (and still needs) surgery for a serious heart condition. In New York, they attended a breakfast sponsored by Diana Fillhart's ministry to the homeless there. Subsequently, during the months they spent up north, the family was adopted by Diana's sponsoring church, Coudersport Alliance. When their visas expired and they had to return to Trinidad, members of the church committed to build them a house.
David Pacchioli
Candi in the air
Coudersport Alliance happens to be Candi's church, and Diana Fillhart a friend of Candi's mom. One day, Candi remembers, Diana came to her house. She had been to Trinidad, and was full of talk about cocoa farming. "I think I was asleep on the couch," Candi says. But she was awake enough to hear the word cocoa. "I had been working in Mark's lab for a year and a half at that point. I thought we should be able to do something for Roopchand."
Guiltinan, who studies cocoa in a place that cannot grow the stuff, is always looking for field partners to help test the results of his work in lab and greenhouse. He is also interested in helping farmers grow cocoa by providing them with better plants. For a lab that specializes in developing efficient techniques for propagation, building a propagation facility—a greenhouse—was a natural idea.
At about the same time, Nick, a life sciences major, had joined the lab. He had worked on Habitat for Humanity projects, and his dad runs a greenhouse business in New Jersey. Nick was a prime candidate, in other words, for getting involved.
Christian cools off
"Mark told us that if we planned it, it would happen," Candi says. So she and Nick, with considerable help from Carter, started pretty much from scratch, first contacting Roopchand, and asking him what kind of facility he thought he needed.
"I was green," Roopchand says, but he visited greenhouses, talked to farmers and agricultural agents, and drew a plan. On their end, Candi and Nick worked on organizing supplies and equipment, logistics., and fund-raising.
Between January and June, Roopchand and Candi communicated continually by phone and email to set things up, and the fruit of it all is this trip, the first in what Guiltinan hopes will be an ongoing series. Through the Office of International Programs at Penn State, Candi and Nick—neither of whom had ever been farther abroad than Canada before—are earning course credit for the experience.
Roopchand, for his part, is eager to get his cocoa farm up and thriving, and to start keeping data on his plants that will help Guiltinan's research. "If this is not done," Roopchand says, "the assistance would all be one way."
Dispatch 9: Send in the Clones
David Pacchioli
Carter and a nurseryman discuss root-cutting methods
Today the greenhouse has its first plants: eight of them. They are clones, donated by the propagation station at La Reunion. Of two genetic varieties, known as 1188 and 919.
Cloning is an efficient way to reproduce high-yield, disease-resistant seedlings, which can then be planted in place of aging and inferior trees. In the lab back home, Guiltinan and his team have developed two cloning methods, a high-tech and a low-tech approach. The first, somatic embryogenesis, involves taking the immature cocoa flower from a proven plant and removing the sterile stamens. These staminodes, five to a plant, are placed in culture and induced with plant hormones to produce embryos, which eventually grow into plants. Since there is no pollination involved, the embryos (and plants) are identical to the original plant. "With this technology," Guiltinan says, "we can take elite genotypes and propagate large numbers of plants in a short amount of time. The question is, are these plants normal?"
David Pacchioli
Roopchand's first clones
To find out, he and his lab are currently field-testing several hundred plants on the island of St. Lucia, monitoring root structure, growth rate, yield, and fertility. The other, low-tech approach that Guiltinan and his team have developed is called bent-wood gardening. In this technique a chosen plant is topped and then bent parallel to the ground. The horizontal main stem then produces shoots which grow vertically. These orthotropic shoots, when cut and rooted, produce clones with true tree structure, as opposed to plagiotropic cuttings, which produce a bush. From ten good plants, Bent-wood gardening can produce perhaps a hundred more in a few years, a marked improvement over most rooted cutting techniques. The method is much less expensive than embryogenesis, and easy for farmers to learn and practice. The great advantage of embryogenesis, on the other hand, is that a single flower can produce over 8,000 plants in one year.
Whatever the propagation technique, preserving genetic variability is an important consideration. For one thing, almost all cocoa plants are self-incompatible; that is, plants of the same variety cannot pollinate each other. For cross-pollination, and as a hedge against disease, it's important for a farmer to grow several types. "The idea is to have good plants, but as many varieties of good plants as possible," Guiltinan says.
Dispatch 10: Cocoa Futures
David Pacchioli
The (all-but) finished greenhouse
The greenhouse is finished—or as near to finished as this Penn State team can make it. The roof is on (and holding steady), the misting and drip-irrigation systems are in place and working, the frames for the plant benches have been painted with brown primer. Mark has even fixed the thing in space: this evening he took a reading with a hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS). (For those who care to visit, Roopchand's greenhouse is located at 10o 18.77' N, 61o 04.67' W.) All that remains is to fill the propagation beds with sand and add some more shade cloth to the east end, where the morning sun slants in.
We also solved a mystery. Returning to the Rio Claro Demonstration Station, where we spoke with Davion Ali last week, we had a chance to visit with the officer in charge, Kamaldeo Maharaj. Mark mentioned the supply-and-demand imbalance of rooted cuttings up at La Reunion, where cocoa farmers were going away empty-handed. Maharaj explained that what we had seen was the result of government policy: a plan to gradually close its propagation stations and encourage private farmers to develop facilities of their own. "But the response has not been good," he said. In fact, he acknowledged, there is little incentive for farmers to take this step, since they are heavily subsidized for simply planting land in cocoa, no matter the type or quality of the seedlings they plant. "This is a shortfall of the current system," he said.
David Pacchioli
Kamaldeo Maharaj
Maharaj went on to acknowledge that the cocoa industry in Trinidad is in decline. "It's not what it used to be," he said. "We need to renew. Our fields are old, our plants are old, our techniques are old." Farmers here get a much higher price for their cocoa than farmers anywhere else in the world, he said, but that's because the price is guaranteed by the government. "We need to get our yields up, our plant quality up. We can't satisfy our markets."
On the positive side, Maharaj seemed confident that the island's Cocoa Board, the governing agency, would be interested in Roopchand's greenhouse, and perhaps in providing some funding to help it succeed. Maybe Roopchand's place can someday be a model, one that will help to rejuvenate the cocoa industry in Trinidad.
Dispatch 11: A Study in Contrasts
Today (Tuesday) we trod the grounds of the Agostini estate in the hills near Gran Couva. Phillip Agostini, representing the fourth-generation of his family to grow cocoa here, has the cool demeanor of a European aristocrat. It isn't hard to reckon why. Agostini cocoa is the acknowledged créme de la creme, used exclusively in French Valrhona chocolate, among the finest chocolates in the world. "The finest," Agostini corrected, with just the trace of a smile.
David Pacchioli
Phillip Agostini
Mark asked him his secret. Environment counts, Agostini said. "We have some of the best soil on the island." Also the quality of plants. "And we cut no corners, not in growing and not in post-harvest. We do things the traditional way." He will sell no cocoa before its time.
The estate of 400 acres produces 100 to 120 tons of cocoa a year. Agostini showed us his fermentation vats, where the wet seeds, fresh from the pod, are cured over a period of six days. (The heat produced kills the embryo, turning seeds into beans.) In one of the five drying houses, workers quietly raked mountains of red-brown beans into neat piles with wooden implements. In both places, the fragrance of cocoa is almost overpoweringly intense, like the richest of pipe tobaccos flavored with molasses.
The estate was replanted in the 1930s and '40s to ward off Witches' Broom, Agostini said, and again in the 1960s after an outbreak of another virus. He is now replanting sections of 10-20 acres per year to protect against Black Pod disease, the current nemesis. He propagates his own plants, and is interested in cloning technologies, he said, because he wants to preserve the quality his family has long been known for. "That's what we're selling here," he said, "a certain quality of flavor."
When they met, Roopchand told Agostini that he remembered visiting the estate as a 16-year-old schoolboy. On the way back to Mayaro, we stopped to see Roopchand's farm, a leased seven-acre parcel half-an-hour from his home and new greenhouse. The contrast could hardly have been more dramatic. This thickly forested plot, abandoned for who knows how many years, is choked with undergrowth; the cocoa trees are old and overgrown. Snakes and mosquitoes abound. Roopchand's harvest this year, his best so far, is one ton of cocoa. The sheer amount of work it will take for one man to rehabilitate this farm is staggering to contemplate. "Here you see the reason why so many farmers quit cocoa and start growing bananas," Siela said.
David Pacchioli
Roopchand at his farm
Roopchand, however, seems undaunted by the prospect. He pointed to an open two-acre section at the front of his plot, now planted in corn. Here, he said, is where he is going to plant his first cocoa seedlings.
Mark asked him his secret. Environment counts, Agostini said. "We have some of the best soil on the island." Also the quality of plants. "And we cut no corners, not in growing and not in post-harvest. We do things the traditional way." He will sell no cocoa before its time.
The estate of 400 acres produces 100 to 120 tons of cocoa a year. Agostini showed us his fermentation vats, where the wet seeds, fresh from the pod, are cured over a period of six days. (The heat produced kills the embryo, turning seeds into beans.) In one of the five drying houses, workers quietly raked mountains of red-brown beans into neat piles with wooden implements. In both places, the fragrance of cocoa is almost overpoweringly intense, like the richest of pipe tobaccos flavored with molasses.
The estate was replanted in the 1930s and '40s to ward off Witches' Broom, Agostini said, and again in the 1960s after an outbreak of another virus. He is now replanting sections of 10-20 acres per year to protect against Black Pod disease, the current nemesis. He propagates his own plants, and is interested in cloning technologies, he said, because he wants to preserve the quality his family has long been known for. "That's what we're selling here," he said, "a certain quality of flavor."
David Pacchioli
In the drying house
When they met, Roopchand told Agostini that he remembered visiting the estate as a 16-year-old schoolboy. On the way back to Mayaro, we stopped to see Roopchand's farm, a leased seven-acre parcel half-an-hour from his home and new greenhouse. The contrast could hardly have been more dramatic. This thickly forested plot, abandoned for who knows how many years, is choked with undergrowth; the cocoa trees are old and overgrown. Snakes and mosquitoes abound. Roopchand's harvest this year, his best so far, is one ton of cocoa. The sheer amount of work it will take for one man to rehabilitate this farm is staggering to contemplate. "Here you see the reason why so many farmers quit cocoa and start growing bananas," Siela said.
Roopchand, however, seems undaunted by the prospect. He pointed to an open two-acre section at the front of his plot, now planted in corn. Here, he said, is where he is going to plant his first cocoa seedlings.
Dispatch 12: The Malaysian Method
Virtually every person we have talked to during this trip has mentioned the name of Paul Manikchand, who raises cocoa near the town of Sangre Grande (pronounced Sandy Grandy). When at last we visited Manikchand's estate today, we found out why.
David Pacchioli
Paul Mankichand and Carter Miller
Driving onto his land is like driving onto a cocoa orchard, with perfect rows of close-order trees flanking the road on either side. Manikchand grows cocoa intensively, according to what he called the Malaysian method. On 33 acres he has planted 75,000 trees. His yields are 1,600 to 1,800 pounds per year per acre, seven or eight times the national average, and he says he's aiming at 3,000. He also gets three times the government-mandated price for his product, direct-marketing to premium chocolate makers around the world.
Manikchand in person is an imposing man, with a voice like James Earl Jones. He holds degrees in engineering and mathematics from UCLA, and returned to his native Trinidad in the late 1970s, after the California aerospace industry took its big dive. He bought land and started the farm in '92. At that time, he said, there was no one locally who could help him with practical knowledge of how to grow cocoa, so he spoke to growers around the world. His is the only high-density cocoa farm on the island, regarded as a model.
There is little room for shade trees in Manikchand's system. To get his trees to produce the way they do, he has to use more fertilizer than most cocoa farmers do. "He's really pushing his plants to the max," Mark says. Somewhat surprisingly for an innovator, Manikchand said he prefers to plant seedlings instead of clones. But his objection turns out to be pragmatic, rather than philosophical. Clones, he says, are bigger at planting time than seedlings, and so they cost him more than seedlings do—$2TT or more, when you count the extra costs of transport and labor.
Furthermore, the ones he has seen, he says, are an uncertain improvement over seed plants. "I am a businessman," he said. "I'm not interested in anything that doesn't work. But if you could prove to me that you had a plant that was orthotropic and disease-resistant, and retained good flavor, I'd pay five dollars for it."
Dispatch 13: The Gene Savers (Final Dispatch)
David Pacchioli
Vish shares his knowledge
Port of Spain. Arrived here yesterday, for the last two days of our stay, and it's a good thing we came when we did.
This morning there was a general strike in Mayaro district. People protesting the lack of jobs and poor living conditions created more than 50 roadblocks with trees and burning tires, closing off traffic for most of the day. Mohan and Roopchand were stuck down there with the Maxi-Taxi, having gone south last night to get the last of our equipment.
Here, the inconvenience was minor: we had to find our own ride to our morning appointment. That was at the Cocoa Research Unit at the University of the West Indies, keepers of the International Cocoa Germplasm Collection, one of the largest repositories of cocoa varieties in the world. For some reason, "germplasm collection" made me think of seeds in a vault. So I didn't take my mosquito repellent or my boots when we left the CRU building for a "short ride" to the gene bank. Forty minutes later, after bouncing down a bone-jarring final stretch of dirt road that seemed to last an eternity, we arrived—at a vast remote tract containing innumerable plots of trees, each tree dog-tagged and groups of 16 marked with signs that read "Peru", or "Mexico," or some less recognizable combination of letters and numerals.
David Pacchioli
Siela and Mark at the germplasm collection
Some 2,500 genetic varieties of cocoa are preserved here, types from around the world, in a collection that was started in the 1920s. Our guide, plant collector Vishnarayan "Vish" Mooleedhar, has brought back a number of these specimens himself. In a quiet voice he told of the medicine men he has encountered in Belize (who travel three days into the rainforest in search of the cocoa bean of pure white), and of being arrested in Ecuador while in search of cocoa. ("Most of the stuff you carry when you're collecting looks like it could be military," he explained.) Mooledhar's specialty is the criollo variety of bean, which he has tracked back to its domestication by the Mayans.
Back at the CRU, director David Butler quickly described a full slate of projects, all centered around this vast collection: the painstaking morphological descriptions of every variety, so exhaustive that in five years only 500 varieties have been completed; the genome mapping; the screening for virus resistance, breeding compatibility, and other valuable information. And then he was out the door, headed for six weeks of research in Brazil. Roopchand and Mohan finally arrived in Port of Spain at dinner-time, after a frustrating day of trying. They brought with them the materials that Mark, Siela, and Carter will need to return to the germplasm site tomorrow and collect flower samples for tissue-culture experiments back in Pennsylvania.
That's the last thing left on the long checklist of "To dos" for this trip, a fascinating, productive, and sometimes grueling foray into a place where some of us may never come again, but all of us have made some lasting ties, as well as learning an awful lot about cocoa.
We will keep in touch—Mark and his team are eager to follow the progress of the new greenhouse over the next few years, to use it as a research base, and to see its impact on cocoa propagation in Mayaro. And all of us are hopeful that Roopchand and his family, our new friends, will reap many benefits from it, and build for themselves a sustainable and rewarding enterprise and a better way of life.
But all of this is in the future. For now, that's all from Plant without Borders in Trinidad.
David Pacchioli
Candi and Nick, whose idea sprouted into Plants Without Borders