00:00I asked Professor Umarayan what the price is at. It's about 8,000 U.S. dollars for a ton of fine flavor cocoa from Trinidad and Tobago. We are sitting on a gold mine.
00:13Cocoa was once king in Trinidad and Tobago, and the cocoa development company, supported by the government, is seeking to restore the commodity to its glory.
00:24Recently, I would have traveled to the United Kingdom, and we met with some very big companies and so on.
00:34And when I was trying to tell them about Trinidad and Tobago, they said, we already know everything.
00:40In fact, I don't want to offend anyone, but the exact words from them were, you have a bloody good product.
00:49That was the exact words of how they described our cocoa. That is the value that it has, not in Trinidad and Tobago, but internationally.
00:58Trinitario fine flavor cocoa, native to TNT, is celebrated by cocoa lovers worldwide for its unique flavor profile.
01:08Now it has secured national trademark certification for the strengthening its positioning in international markets.
01:16It is one of the few agricultural products for which Trinidad and Tobago is universally recognized as a point of origin and not merely a producer.
01:26And this mark is not simply a logo or a label, although you will see the beautiful cutout behind me, and you will see another beautiful one soon.
01:35I already told PS we're taking that one back to the ministry.
01:37It communicates to international buyers, chocolate makers, and discerning customers that Trinitario cocoa from Trinidad and Tobago meets defined standards of quality, production, and origin.
01:50And that's important.
01:51It will be the CDC as a regulatory body who will regulate this particular mark to determine, based on the quality of the beans, the production, and the standard, and the origin,
02:02to determine whether or not the product that is being placed on the market will be able to be certified.
02:09Agriculture Minister Ravi Rattaram describes the trademark certification as a testament of government's push towards agriculture modernization and diversification.
02:20It reflects our strategic commitment to elevate the agricultural sector from subsistence output to globally recognized branded quality export products rooted in heritage, enabled by innovation, and protected now by the law.
02:40Trinitario production has been on a steady decline over the years.
02:45However, the cocoa development board is giving its commitment to reviving the industry.
02:50Which we consider now, brown gold, so we are moving, we already have black gold, and we are now trying to now market and develop, which was there already to rehabilitate the fields that where we were in 2015 at almost 600, 700 metric tons, declined over the years to even now 300 metric tons.
03:14We want to go back to the days when I can remember we were between 30,000 and 40,000 metric tons.
03:21Renasa Cutting, TV6 News.
Comments