Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It the best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: And welcome back to Freedom 106.5 FM 833 right here in sweet, sweet, sweet Trinidad and Tobago. And of course, we are still celebrating women, I believe, and this is my opinion, I believe we should be celebrated the entire year because we are awesome individuals.
So we are celebrating women today in the agriculture sector and with me and help me welcome the beautiful Alicia Hossain, the pro treasurer of exchange of farmers association in Cuva. And we're going to be talking about the females in the agricultural sector. Hi. Good morning, Alicia, and welcome to freedom.
[00:00:52] Speaker C: Good morning.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: How are you today? How are you doing?
[00:00:55] Speaker C: Fine.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: You're fine? So agriculture and women, how meshing, how are we doing that? I mean, we just do all kind of almost impossible things as women. Now, let me tell you, when we had the COVID period, right, your girl said, well, you know what? I'm going to see if I could plant a little tomatoes in a little. In one of those small plant buckets. Gil, I catch my nen to take care of that tomato plant.
[00:01:30] Speaker C: Well.
[00:01:34] Speaker D: Hello.
[00:01:34] Speaker C: A lot of people use COVID as an opportunity.
[00:01:37] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: But how do you do it on a wider scale?
[00:01:42] Speaker C: Tell us about yourself and tell us.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Why you chose the path of agriculture.
[00:01:48] Speaker C: Well, let me start by saying thank you for having me on the program.
Starting in agriculture wasn't a plan.
I'm an ex family worker.
So we were given these land, right?
Given these land. We got the opportunity to do something.
In starting, we decided to form an NGO, which pulled things together a little bit more.
Right at the beginning, I was like, I don't have a plan.
I don't have a plan. I don't know what I wanted.
And then I decided, why not put fruits?
We have a lot of people who don't even know what a simple cashew is, what it looks like in a tree.
So I started with that and with formulation of the group, I realized I could do more.
So what I did, I started intercropping. You started what?
I have the trees and I have peppers. Oklahoma Melongen.
And I started to do courses and be able to say, oh, this is what we need.
So starting is just a mindset, I believe, because we have all different type of people by us planting, from police to engineers, and they are looking at it in a different way. We want to make a change in agriculture, right?
We don't want to just be farmers. We want to be professionals.
So bringing agriculture. As a woman, my outlook on it is a bit different. I don't want people to look down on us.
We want to be able to see we are making it and we are making a difference.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: But what is your drive? What makes you get up in the morning and say, right, let's get at it. Alicia, remember, we have this plant. It ain't looking too good. Let me go and check on it and make sure everything in our order. What gives you that drive to get up in the morning and go out there and be awesome?
[00:04:24] Speaker C: You would not believe, looking at the plan, when you plant something, you see it. Beer for the first time. Yay.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: You must be excited, right?
[00:04:35] Speaker C: It is amazing.
[00:04:38] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:04:41] Speaker C: When I go out to these other fields and I see people planting and actually bringing that to say that I'm going to sell it, and somebody say, oh, my God, I never see something like this.
[00:04:57] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:04:57] Speaker C: What we do is we have a little farmers market, so I take feedback and I pass it on to the farmer.
[00:05:06] Speaker D: Right.
[00:05:06] Speaker C: So my drive on agriculture is a little bit different. As I said, it's not just planting and making money, it's trying to make a difference.
[00:05:18] Speaker D: Nice.
[00:05:19] Speaker C: We want to be able to say your shelf life on an item.
[00:05:25] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: We want to be able to say it's a week, two weeks.
You know how good. It's so good.
[00:05:38] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:05:39] Speaker C: And this is three weeks after.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: You know what I think is really awesome?
You see you as a farmer, you are feeding generations. You know that?
[00:05:50] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: And that is right on my pause. Reese.
[00:05:53] Speaker D: Right.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Because I'm listening to you speaking, and I know we have a lot of female farmers out there, and they are doing the most. They are doing the most. And because we are nurturers by nature, I am sure that your crop is not only nutritious, but beneficial, not for only our generation here, but our generations to come.
And you are part of that. You are a part of that.
[00:06:26] Speaker C: We are not.
My sake.
Sorry about that.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: That's okay.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: I want to be able to go out there and say I did something to make a difference.
Not seeing the land being down in the little area in Cooper, there's a housing right around.
So we are cross from rice, and then we have the estate on the other side.
[00:07:01] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: So you want to see that green. You want to appreciate that food could come from you in the middle and nowhere.
[00:07:12] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: In a concrete jungle, you can have food.
[00:07:14] Speaker D: Yeah.
Wow.
[00:07:17] Speaker C: So we want to make sure we can believe that.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Let me jump to the other side.
Is being a female farmer challenging?
Tell us the challenges that you face and tell me how you overcome these challenges.
[00:07:39] Speaker C: My challenge at the beginning would have been people feel that you just don't know.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:47] Speaker C: Because you would not see a woman going in the garden and farming full time.
So at the beginning, you were like, she has nothing good to say. And then realizing that I educated myself to put myself in that position to be able to farm.
We are facing the same difficulties. Pretty alask labor, rising price with chemicals, bushfires.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: Do bushfires affect fires? Yeah, that's our next challenge. I know a lot of farmers are facing.
[00:08:35] Speaker C: In our area. Definitely right now. Bushfire is horrible. It burning twice.
[00:08:45] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:08:46] Speaker C: And then we have a problem with cows.
One of the things I have learned is to bring everybody together, all the stakeholders to work for us and not against us. So when you say a challenge for me, I see it as another hurdle to overcome.
[00:09:06] Speaker D: Right.
[00:09:08] Speaker C: So I always meet with stakeholders to get distilling, deal with the problem.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: Now, in the association, exchange Farmers association, do you all get assistance?
Either it's government funding or assistance from any other, let's say private entity as well. Do you all get that type of funding or that type of assistance?
[00:09:35] Speaker C: We have never funding.
Our farmers work together as an organization to achieve so far what we have.
We want to have a wholesale market and we are working on that.
We will raise funds to do any little activity that we have.
[00:10:01] Speaker D: Right.
[00:10:02] Speaker C: But we have never requested fund.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Okay, but is it that what we.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: Request from the government is simple as it is, if a farmer don't have the land and they are utilizing from another person, help them with the farmers badge?
[00:10:22] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Because I know that is something that, let's say, for instance, even as a farmer, if you have to get funding, like individually, they tell you, well, you had to hire farmers badge law and you had to have this and you had to have that. But a lot of farmers out there, both male and female, they don't have the badge because it's quite difficult or it's a lengthy process to get.
[00:10:46] Speaker C: That is one of the things we noticed initially.
And we would have met with administrative. Actually, last week we had another meeting because we came across a stumble and block again.
And we had another meeting in which we want to deal with that issue. So the farmers in my area, we work very closely to solve our own issues.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Okay.
Just highlight about three of those issues, those major issues that you all face.
[00:11:18] Speaker C: Recently, we have had a lot of previous last move. Number one, the key thing is they were keeping a lot of planting.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: And.
[00:11:30] Speaker C: They planted certain things, like when the prices are really high, they go with it. What really?
[00:11:38] Speaker B: So it's like a strategic thing then.
[00:11:44] Speaker C: And I have been having that problem until probably last month. Radio lastly came down and did it a night visit.
It did not stop, but it's not as high anymore.
The COVID police station works very close with us and I'm thankful for that call. Sometime in the night I will be on the line with a farmer, lazing with the police to make sure that we have a patrol. Especially when the farmer is watchman in the night. I try to make myself available to work with them.
The other problem we have been facing lately is cows.
Cows, yes. They come in any toilet plant, everything.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Oh, gosh, man. Cows.
[00:12:41] Speaker C: But is it that.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: I don't know if it could probably build something around the plants so that they wouldn't be able to get in there.
[00:12:53] Speaker C: Oh, my God. Is that like one plot?
[00:12:56] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: How can we kind of prevent the cows from going into the lands and.
[00:13:06] Speaker C: Eating our crop policies that are already there?
Because you are supposed to secure your animals, right?
[00:13:15] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:16] Speaker C: Always recharge. But because we don't enforce policies, we have these things and you all won't be able to.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Well, as the farmers, you won't be able to identify who the cow belongs to.
[00:13:29] Speaker C: We did and predialasses currently dealing with that.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: Okay. So hopefully it should be resolved quickly, soon.
[00:13:38] Speaker C: Hopefully.
[00:13:39] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:13:40] Speaker C: One of the other issues you'll be having is chemical crisis.
No matter how much you try to go green, you have to spray because the environment itself and there are too much things that are carried for the plants that you have to spray.
And then natural chemicals, you get back a subsidy.
[00:14:07] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:14:12] Speaker C: To fix things in order to get back a little something.
[00:14:16] Speaker D: Right.
[00:14:18] Speaker C: One of the other issues that we have is bad seed or bad planting material.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: Bad planting material, yes.
[00:14:30] Speaker C: Recently you would have noticed the price of cucumbers, how high it is.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: Yeah, boy.
[00:14:37] Speaker C: Right. It's because you see it's not good.
So.
And then you're not getting that time again to pick because you have bad planting material.
[00:14:55] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:14:58] Speaker C: So if we could get.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Would you agree that in Trinidad and Tobago we have enough land to plant so that we could see.
[00:15:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Would you agree with that?
[00:15:33] Speaker C: One of the project would be processing plan.
You ever noticed tomato?
[00:15:44] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:15:45] Speaker C: So instead of trying it out and not taking it, leaving it on its EU, we want to be able to process for ourselves.
Prices can remain stable if the government is willing to talk and listen to these stakeholders.
They need to listen.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Wow. Thank you so much, Alicia. But I want one more thing, because I'm not looking at the time. You see, when you're having a conversation like this. The time just seems to run so far, so far away. Now let me just ask. Now you mentioned that we need certain changes when it comes to the agricultural sector, right? But how do you think women should be celebrated in the sector? What do you think somebody can do for you and your other female compadre? Compadras? Can I say that? How can we celebrate you guys some more?
[00:16:53] Speaker C: How can we celebrate?
[00:16:55] Speaker B: Yeah, women oliters do some real awesome work. We have to celebrate all it.
[00:17:02] Speaker C: I would love to see that they take it seriously.
And I like it that we just celebrate USA.
We really not only provide by cancel, but how do we celebrate? I celebrate myself every day.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Very nice. You know we are superheroes, right?
[00:17:33] Speaker C: How do you celebrate women?
[00:17:39] Speaker B: I feel probably give all you some free seeds.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: Free seeds?
No, give us the permission to bring our own seeds so we could make magic. Well, you see, we could do magic. Seriously, I would love to see that they ease on that and we could bring in and I could give you some different things that you would not be seeing planted locally.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Yes. See, I like that. Now, before we go, I know we have just about nine minutes before I end my show for the female who is sitting there in their office listening to us right now and always had a dream of being a farmer or being involved in the agricultural sector. What do you have to say to her?
[00:18:25] Speaker C: Gordon? Plant. Even if you're doing it part time, it's the joy that you feel by seeing that plant grow and actually picking it and cooking it.
You know what my mother. What's that?
Before she's buy green tomatoes.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: So now she's planting it. No, it has to ripe.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: So she.
[00:18:52] Speaker C: Looks at things differently now.
[00:18:55] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:18:56] Speaker C: So enjoy it. Even if you have to plant something in a bucket.
One of the things I would like to tell everybody in Trinidad, plant a gova tree.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: Plant a gova tree.
[00:19:09] Speaker C: It's a super fruit.
The benefits of it is so good.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: You know, sometimes when I eat a go, when I pick a gova from a gova tree, right, Alicia, I will start to bite it. And by the time I take two bites, I see a woman. I was getting frightened. I don't want a womb to grow inside of me.
[00:19:30] Speaker C: That's because we have so much thing, serious thing.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: Tusca, Tuscan are walking. She's like, what kind of. Yeah, that's the only reason why I may not eat a gova fresh from the tree. And Alicia, that's the only reason.
Oh, gosh, thank God I don't.
[00:19:55] Speaker C: Plant a gova tree.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: Plant a go of a tree. Plant a go of a tree. Don't about Kari V and them worms and them, somebody say I could eat it. You know, somebody say, Govind, tell me I could eat the worms. But I'm not doing that. Govind, sorry about that. I'm not doing that.
[00:20:08] Speaker C: I can't see it and I eat it. It's all, well.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: All right, Alicia. But thank you so much for joining us. And I hope we have you here again because I would love to learn and hear more from you, what you experience on a daily basis when it comes to planting and agriculture. Thanks so much joining us.
[00:20:26] Speaker C: Okay. Enjoy day.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: Have a good one.
[00:20:28] Speaker C: Thank you so much.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: And continue being a superhero. Be awesome.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
