“Farming does not have to mean backbreaking work in the hot sun with a hoe any more. You can grow an entire crop indoors, for instance, or in a partially shaded enclosure, with much less labour, mechanisation and appropriate technology,” said Dr Wayne Ganpat on March 31.
Dr Ganpat is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Food and Agriculture. He was talking about the many possibilities in agricultural approaches these days, in a Guardian interview at his office at UWI, St Augustine. “It’s extremely important that we learn to farm smarter,” he said.
But how exactly do we do this? Can ideas from aquaponics (the rearing of fish and plants in a symbiotic system), or Cuba’s organic urban gardens, or even peeponics (yes, peeponics—in which you use filtered urine to fertilise plants) help us grow more of our own food, in better ways? What kinds of effective agro-technology can we create or adapt right here in T&T to suit an ever-drying and changeable Caribbean climate?
These questions are all part of UWI’s challenge to teenagers, as the Faculty of Food and Agriculture is currently inviting youth in secondary schools to participate in its first ever competition in agricultural innovation.
Students are being asked to propose innovative ideas for growing food to address T&T food security. Short-listed proposals must flesh out ideas in drawn designs, and a final ten winning designs will be brought to life as the student teams build tabletop prototypes of their innovative agricultural systems. Ideas can also include design of computerised applications and programmes to power up or improve mechanised grow systems.
The contest is part of the Agriculture Demonstration Of Practices and Technologies (Adopt) project, which seeks innovative technologies to address agricultural challenges, especially focussing on non-traditional systems for better small-scale farming approaches.
This project comes under a larger project, spanning three faculties (Food and Agriculture, Engineering, and Science & Technology), which is being funded by the UWI-T&T Research and Development Impact (RDI) fund. This project, led by project team leader Dr Wendy-Ann Isaac, is called Technological Solutions for Improved Agro-Environment and Sustainability of Agricultural Development.
Ancient innovations
A great idea, of course, does not have to be new, to be effective. The Xochimilco people back in the 1400s were extremely innovative—they created their own artificial agricultural islands, or “chinampas,” within shallow lake areas of the Valley of Mexico, in what used to be an extensive system of fertile wetlands and canals.
They created their island gardens from long rectangular rafts laden down with beds of earth and sediments from the lake. There they grew maize, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers, flowers, and even small trees, whose roots often grew straight down to the lakebed, helping to anchor the island. Because it was in a lake, no irrigation was needed. By the early 1500s, before the Spanish conquest, chinampas covered nearly 9,000 hectares (22,230 acres) on Lakes Xochimilco and Chalco. Each hectare (2.47 acres) could feed about 20 people, supporting most of Tenochtitlán’s Aztec residents.
And centuries before that, sixth century Chinese farmers had figured out how to raise two or three food sources at the same time, often recycling wastes from one to be nutrients for another.
For instance, they reared ducks in cages above ponds of finfish—they also reared catfish in another pond, into which water from the finfish pond would be drained. In this arrangement, the finfish were fed with duck droppings, whilst the catfish were fed with finfish waste. Any “leftover food” would fertilise rice in the flooded paddy fields. They had essentially invented the earliest form of aquaponics.
Rethinking current methods
Fast forward to today, and quite a few farmers in T&T are rethinking traditional methods of growing crops in open fields, especially in a time of climate change and extreme weather events.
Some farmers have already adapted their field methods, or are in the process of replacing open field farming with farming in buildings or partially covered sheds or tents, growing a variety of plants and/or animals in more controlled systems.
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But not nearly enough farmers, or future farmers, are aware of the range of possibilities, says Dr Ganpat, who is especially keen to raise awareness in students of the value of a career in agriculture. There is a problem of not enough modern agricultural technologies being taught in schools in T&T, said Dr Ganpat, noting that other Caribbean islands take it much more seriously.
“Even when we teach it in schools, it’s often just in the form of a kitchen garden, so children associate all agriculture with hot sun, hard work and low science,” he said. The anti-agriculture stigma is strengthened when schools make the mistake of only sending their less academically inclined students to agriculture classes, he added.
Kenia-Rosa Campo, a researcher in the Adopt project and the coordinator of the school competition, said: “In a survey, we found that the attitude was—if you can’t make it in life, you farm.
But the lack in education in agriculture causes many farmers to abuse or misuse pesticides and chemicals, which end up being harmful to us when we eat their crops...They too often don’t have the education to apply technologies wisely.”
Too many students here simply don’t know about current technologies which have been dramatically changing agriculture in other places, feels Dr Ganpat, so they stigmatise agriculture from a misconceived notion of what it involves. And the scary part is the fact that T&T’s farmers are literally dying off, the average age of a Trinidad farmer is 60.
“If we don’t replace them, then our food security is going to be at serious risk not too long from now. And who better to involve than our bright young students?” said Ganpat.
The Faculty of Food and Agriculture is using the school competition aspect of its Adopt project to help promote more healthy interest in agriscience among young people. Energy firm Repsol is a main sponsor of the competition.
UWI is also aiming to build better links between secondary schools and UWI’s Faculty of Food and Agriculture programmes, spreading the word that a good career in agriculture is entirely possible and viable here. “There are lots of opportunities in agriculture—‘agri-preneurs’ can empower themselves and run their own businesses,” said Campo, “...and they can use modern technologies to simplify and maximise production.”
So what is Protected Agriculture?
UWI’s current Adopt project, “blends Protected Agriculture shade house technology with a combination of alternative agricultural methods like hydroponics, organoponics, aquaponics, peeponics, aeroponics, vermiponics and barrelponics growing systems, and LED light technology, for sustainable food production using low-cost or recyclable materials.”
So what, exactly, is Protected Agriculture? It is the “modification of the natural environment to achieve optimal growth”, according to the CARDI website. This is admittedly a very broad definition, which can include many combinations of methods.
The one thing they all have in common is the use of some form of building or protective shade structure, within which (or underneath which) the agriculture happens, often with the help of mechanised and/or other kinds of technology to reduce labour needs and costs.
The most expensive part is the initial startup costs. But you can recover these costs after some years of production, said Campo. This means you could conceivably farm comfortably from your office, located next to a grow-room—or farm part-time, while doing other jobs.
Protected Agriculture can, for instance, mean growing vegetables totally indoors in enriched mineralised water in artificial LED light—a hydroponics approach. It could also mean growing plants in tubs of compost under a semi-open tent in a field, open to filtered natural sunlight. Or it could mean setting up an integrated system where you grow both plants and fish (often tilapia), the fish poop fertilising the plants—an aquaponics approach.
For some farmers, it may mean growing crops in more labour-intensive, shared community gardens of raised beds in concrete or brick enclosures, right in the heart of your own town or city, as they do in Cuba in their Organopónicos approach. For other farmers, it may mean totally mechanised, closed greenhouse systems. It just depends on your goals, needs, and resources.
UWI is inviting student teams to research these and other areas, to come up with their own workable, innovative projects for applying Protected Agriculture systems. All secondary schools are invited to participate. Deadline for submitting proposals is April 30—so, get ready, get set, go!
BOX 1: 164 words (*must be used)
AGRI CONTEST DEADLINE APRIL 30
Student teams in Forms 2 to 5 of all secondary schools are invited to participate in the competition.
Phase I: Interested schools should send a letter with a proposal of their innovative ideas to address food security using the competition guidelines, to the Department of Food Production at UWI. Deadline is April 30, 2016.
Phase II: From these proposals, 50 will be short-listed. These student teams will then be asked to submit budgets and drawings of their designs. Each school can submit up to two teams, with each team comprising five to ten students.
Phase III: From the 50 proposals, a panel of judges will select ten school teams to build table-top prototypes of their proposed designs. These demo models will be displayed at UWI on June 30.
Contact: Interested schools can contact the Department of Food Production at UWI via email at food.production@sta.uwi.edu, adopt.uwirdi.project@gmail.com or call 662-2002 ext. 82090 or 84055 for further.
