Conference Proceedings

Conference Proceedings 1



Table of Contents PAGE iv Foreword 1 PAPERS PRESENTED 27 31 An historical, biographical, social and disciplinary account of the contribution to agriculture teaching and research of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (ICTA), the University 40 College of the West Indies (UCWI) and The University of the West Indies (UWI) (1921 to 2021) 51 to the Caribbean and world food and agriculture 58 Gary Wayne Garcia 66 72 A virtual transplant: moving plant clinics from face to face to online – the Extension Training 86 and Information Services Division of Trinidad and Tobago experience Roshni Sita Ramsingh 93 94 Artificial intelligence in the agriculture sector of small island developing states in the Caribbean 95 Roganci Fontelera, Fazeeia Mohammed, Jade Chattergoon, Omar Mohammed, Patrick Hosein i The evaluation of machine learning models in the agriculture sector of Caribbean SIDS as it applies to weed detection and water-stress in Capsicum annuum and Brassica Chinensis L. mono-cropped fields for artificial intelligence application development Fazeeia Mohammed, Jade Chattergoon, Roganci Fontelera, Omar Mohammed, Professor Patrick Hosein A survey of pet shop operations in Trinidad, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago R. A. Macfarlane and G. W. Garcia An evaluation of the Poultry Surveillance Unit, National Animal Disease Centre, Animal Production and Health Division, Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries R. A. Macfarlane and G. W. Garcia Poultry farm vulnerability to the introduction, transmission and spread of avian influenza in Trinidad, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago R. A. Macfarlane and G.W. Garcia Effectiveness of a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan and checklist to control food safety and quality at a poultry plant in Trinidad Lizanda Gookool, Neela Badrie, Marsha Singh Wildlife for sustainable food production, an assessment of two neo-tropical species production models Laura Tardieu and Gary W. Garcia ABSTRACTS SUBMITTED Analytics in agriculture: GreenAlysis system in a dwarf pommecythere (Spondias dulcis Parkinson) orchard in Trinidad and Tobago Breadfruit commercialisation for sustainable food and nutrition security in the Caribbean Competitive analysis of crops cultivated in plant factories to reduce food importation: romaine lettuce and strawberries Conference Proceedings

Table of Contents (cont’d) PAGE Home hydroponic gardens: a promising approach to enhance household food security in urban 96 areas of Trinidad 97 98 Phytostimulatory effects of Trinidadian seaweeds in tomato and sweet pepper 99 Principles for environmentally-friendly edible crop production 100 Relationship between yield and physical quality characteristics in dwarf vegetable pigeon pea 101 Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp. 102 Leaf area index and light interception response to canopy level and canopy orientation of 103 juvenile breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis Forsberg) cultivars in Trinidad 104 105 Aquaponics an innovative solution to food security in SIDS: a review of system types and their 106 potential as sustainable, climate-smart farming techniques for Caribbean 107 ICTA-UWI agriculture: domestic animals and neo-tropical non-domestic animals teaching, 108 research and extension 1921 to 2021 109 Livestock in the primary schools? The Nature Corner, an awareness approach to introduce the 110 study of animals at the primary school level in Trinidad and Tobago 111 The Open School of Tropical Animal Science and Production (OSTASP) 2001 to 2021 112 Agricultural impacts on soil hydraulic conductivity properties in a tropical sub-basin 113 Building climate resilience agriculture using smart vegetation maps and landscape level data in 114 Small Island Developing States 115 116 Prioritising climate smart agriculture practices in Trinidad: a multistakeholder approach 117 Food safety and quality checklist – evaluation of a local poultry plant to determine the effectiveness of food safety and quality assurance using a HACCP plan Photovoice data collection method: building community-based nutrition sensitive value chains and healthy moms in Nevis Assessment of risk communication: mitigation of contamination of fruits and vegetables due to flooding in Plum Mitan, Sangre Grande, Trinidad and Tobago Building climate resilience agriculture using smart vegetation maps and landscape level data in Small Island Developing States Generating an open Caribbean-based UAV dataset of crops, weeds and landscape level data for precision agriculture in Small Island Developing States Harnessing biotechnology for climate change adaptation for food and nutrition security in the Caribbean The application of the ongoing FAAIR project within the agricultural sector in Small Island Developing States Environmental health impacts of pesticide use Social media for augmenting virtual communities of practices among agricultural extension and advisory professionals Exploring farmers perception of CSA technologies: a case of Caura farmers Trinidad ii Conference Proceedings

Table of Contents (cont’d) PAGE 118 Digitalisation of Caribbean extension: regional perspectives, challenges and opportunities 119 120 Agricultural water resource management in the U.S. Virgin Islands 121 122 Advancements in ICT adoption in extension: synthesising contemporary research in the CARICOM region 123 124 The “multifunctionality of agriculture” for the Caribbean (CARICOM/CARIFORUM) 125 countries and small island states. Part 1: Development of the rationale and objectives The “multifunctionality of agriculture” for the Caribbean (CARICOM/CARIFORUM) countries and small island states. Part 2: An analysis of the multifunctionality concept The “multifunctionality of agriculture” for the Caribbean (CARICOM/CARIFORUM) countries and small island states. Part 3: The way forward for Caribbean agriculture using the multifunctionality considerations Playing in the park: exploring the dynamic performance of Jamaican agroparks Food fight! The science question in the transformation of food systems and why the decolonisation of science matters Conference Proceedings iii

Dr Ronald Roopnarine FOREWORD served as the fulcrum upon which we have progressed. Lecturer, Department of Food Production, Islands” Campus in Antigua and Barbuda Faculty of Food and Agriculture, UWI were formed in 2008 and 2019 respectively. This conference represented the zenith of a It would, by no means be a misrepresentation series of celebratory events, spearheaded by Coordinator of Conference, “Celebrating to proclaim that, The UWI blossomed into a the FFA, UWI in commemoration of 100 a Hundred Years of Agricultural Research revolutionary regional educational institution years teaching and research. It took place and Innovation: Perspectives on Tropical that has forged the very fabric of regional in the midst of the pandemic, in a virtual Food and Agriculture Systems” development in the post-colonial era. setting, with the aim of highlighting global perspectives on Food and Agricultural The Faculty of Food and Agriculture, One may wonder as to the significance of the Systems, relevant to Caribbean Small The University of the West Indies (FFA, aforementioned in the context of a foreword Island Developing States (SIDS).  While UWI) began its voyage over 100 years ago, for these conference proceedings and rightly we celebrated however, we recognize that through various precursors and institutional so. It refers to the history of the institution we cannot linger in the splendours of the reformations. The FFA’s genesis was the which many may consider not particularly past, but rather we must build on the sound West Indian Agricultural College (WIAC), relevant. On the flipside, however, those of you foundation we were fortunate enough to formally established on 30 August 1921 who live and work in the region, particularly inherit. The contents of the proceedings give in St Augustine. In 1924, it was renamed in the agricultural sector may endorse its an insight into the range and depth of topics as the famed Imperial College of Tropical inclusion. Permit me to explain, over the covered at the conference. We trust that this Agriculture (ICTA) with the primary focus years the regional agricultural sector went will provide the impetus to collectively chart of enhancing tropical agriculture, imperial from one of the major economic drivers to a course towards making the next 100 years in nature and specially designed to fulfil the one that now has limited economic relevance, far more productive than the first!   proclivities of the British empire. On the cusp with less than 5% contribution to GDP in of the struggle for independence in Trinidad most Caribbean countries. Inadvertently, the As in all things it is important that amidst and Tobago and Jamaica, the higher education current FFA, UWI which originated from the celebratory grandeur, we give thanks. We ecosystem of the region underwent a series famed ICTA, is struggling to re-establish its must recognise the efforts of all our ancestry of strategic transformations. The University prominence of the past. I refer to the Latin affiliates of the various precursors of the FFA. College of the West Indies (UCWI) was phrase engraved on the current administration Additionally, noting the magnanimity of this formed at Mona, Jamaica in 1948 and in 1960 building of The UWI STA, which served as feat, and the novelty of the modality, given the ICTA campus at St Augustine became the the administration building of ICTA, ‘via the mobility constraints associated with the second campus of UCWI and ICTA became colendi haud facilis’ which translates to ‘the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be remise of the Faculty of Agriculture. Two years later, way of farming is not easy’. In the context of me to not acknowledge the staff of The UWI, in 1962, the same year that both Trinidad our current trials the truth reflected in these FFA, academic and administrative, as well as and Tobago and Jamaica became sovereign words are undeniable. Revisiting my earlier the UWI-STA as a whole for their unyielding nations, the prestigious University of the West statement regarding the relevance of these efforts. I must also mention the past FFA Indies, St Augustine Campus (UWI STA) was historical accounts, regional developmental Dean (Professor Wayne Ganpat) who established. In 1963 the Cave Hill campus agendas and perhaps the remnants of colonial played a crucial role in driving this process was birthed in Barbados, and more recently hegemony has repositioned a once prominent forward as well as Dr. Lystra Fletcher- The UWI’ s Open Campus, a culmination of field of study into one that is now viewed Paul for her sterling leadership of the 100- previous iterations of UWI extra-mural and by many as trifling and inconsequential. year anniversary committee. I also wish to distance-learning institutions, and the “Five Therefore, it is crucial that we emphasize the commend Ms. Sarojini Ragbir and Mr. Bruce past.  In so much as the future arises from Lauckner, both of whom were responsible iv the past through the present, no guidance for the collation of these Proceedings. I must which ignores the past can be based on a firm also recognize the Food and Agriculture foundation. We must understand the vehicle Organisation of the United Nation (FAO) for that led us to where we are, as a society we their sponsorship and willingness to partner must recognize the vital role that agriculture with us in delivering the conference and and related disciplines played towards its associated products. Recognition must establishing our current reality and more also be afforded to all the researchers who importantly, the role that it can play towards contributed to these Proceedings as well securing a sustainable future for the region. as the participants who attended the event. On behalf of the FFA and as Conference The importance of Agriculture and Food Coordinator, I express my utmost thanks to Systems alike became exceedingly obvious as all involved. the world struggled to combat the challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic,  I trust that the contents of this document will and particularly so in the Caribbean. Notably, provide interesting insights to all and act as a in the spectrum of calamities, opportunities form of inspiration to foster the change that are plentiful. Looking back at societal is needed to propel the FFA, UWI and the development, we will see that humans were regional agricultural sector alike to emulate merely nomads, (hunter gatherers), prior to and perhaps surpass the achievements of the the concept of domestication of plants and past. animals and eventually agricultural systems. Agriculture, therefore, in no uncertain terms Conference Proceedings

An historical, biographical, social and disciplinary account of the contribution to agriculture teaching and research of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (ICTA), the University College of the West Indies (UCWI) and The University of the West Indies (UWI) (1921 to 2021) to the Caribbean and world food and agriculture Gary Wayne Garcia Retired Professor of Livestock Science, The Open Tropical Forage-Animal Production Laboratory (OTF-APL), The Open School of Tropical Animal Science and Production (OSTAS&P) Department of Food Production, Faculty of Food and Agriculture, UWI, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago Email: [email protected] Website: The Open School of Tropical Animal Science and Production, http://ostasp.brinkster.net/ In 1921 no universities or institutions of higher learning existed in the English speaking Caribbean (ESC), although two of the oldest universities in the Western Hemisphere existed in the Caribbean, the University of Santo Domingo (1538) and the University of Havana (1728), both were Spanish speaking and Eurocentric in their approach to education. L’universite d’etat du Haiti was established in the 1820s and was French speaking. In the British controlled Caribbean, it was only in 1948 (almost 400 years after the Spanish established universities herein) that a university was established. This was the University College of the West Indies (UCWI) at Mona, Jamaica, which was linked to the University of London. In 1960 the ICTA campus at St Augustine became the UCWI with the formation of the Faculties of Agriculture, Arts, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences and Engineering. The UCWI did not become an independent University, The University of the West Indies (UWI), until 1962. The purpose of this conference is to celebrate the 100 years of teaching and research of ICTA-UCWI-UWI Agriculture at St Augustine, Trinidad. The objectives of this scholarly initiative are: 1. to present the background to the formation of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (ICTA) 2. to describe and analyse the evolution of the ICTA to the University College of the West Indies (UCWI) and The University of the West Indies (UWI) 3. to describe the contribution of the institutions to the Caribbean and world agriculture 4. to highlight the scientists and their contributions to the different agricultural disciplines 5. to highlight the contributions made by ICTA-UCWI-UWI to the developing society of Trinidad and Tobago from an historical, political and socio-economic perspective. The contribution of the institutions to world agriculture is described over three phases, 1921 to 1 1950, 1951 to 1990 and 1991 to 2021. The primary justification for this is simply that this type of analysis has never been done. The achievements of ICTA-UCWI-UWI agriculture teaching and research are described from a socio-historical context through the people who contributed to these accomplishments, highlighting the achievements of both the graduates as well as the research and teaching staff. The contributions to teaching, research and the social development of the Caribbean and wider world of the early graduates of ICTA, graduates of UWI and the teachers and researchers within the system are followed. The early graduates of the ICTA such as PVC Professor Dudley Huggins and Holman Williams Senior (class of ICTA 1925) and Professor Gordon Conway (ICTA- UWI class of 1962, President of the Rockefeller Foundation 1998) are highlighted alongside the British Conference Proceedings

scholars who taught in the institution such as Professors Harlan, Cope, Hardy and Purseglove and the man who went into the Amazon to get the cocoa germplasm, Dan Chalmers. Professor Purseglove was the first Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and the author of the first definitive initial text on tropical crops, which included neotropical crops most of which have been the basis of modern day foods. In the 1950 to 1990 period most noteworthy were the accomplishments of Professor Lawrence A. Wilson, as Dean he was also the Chair of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) at Ibadan, Nigeria and the Chair of the Board of Governors of the Consortium Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centres. The contributions of Emeriti Professors Ahamad, Duncan, Spence, Braithwaite, Mahadevan and Henderson are highlighted. In this same period Emeritus Professor Holman Williams Junior initiated the UWI-Mc Gill Sugarcane Feeds Centre and the UWI School of Veterinary Medicine. The contributions of the ICTA-UCWI-UWI agriculture to economics, agricultural economics, geography, soil science, food and export crops production, carnival and culture, livestock (neotropical domestic and non-domestic) production, health and veterinary training and regional agricultural administration are highlighted. All of this is presented within the pre and post-colonial context. The study closes by asking why are the countries of the ESC net importers of food. Key words: Tropical agriculture, history of ICTA-UCWI-UWI agriculture, teaching and research, biography and contributions of graduates and academic staff Introduction resources of Trinidad and Tobago. Over the early In 1921 there were no universities or institutions years the TTFNC interacted with the ICTA scientists. of higher learning and research within the English Then as the ICTA went towards the UCWI and UWI, Speaking Caribbean (ESP). There were, however, the TTFNC became closely associated with the within the Caribbean two of the oldest universities Departments of Biological Sciences and Life Sciences within the Western Hemisphere/New World/ of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and not with the Neotropics. These were the University of Santo Faculty of Agriculture in all its transformations. Domingo (established in 1538) and the University of This paper was developed for the conference to Havana (established in 1728), respectively 484 and 294 celebrate the 100 years of teaching and research in years ago. Both universities were Spanish speaking and agriculture, from 1921 to 2021, at ICTA-UCWI-UWI Eurocentric in their approach to education. This was St Augustine, Trinidad. The objectives of this narrative because there were no viable civilisations upon which are: to build after the Spanish came to the New World. As 1. to present the background to the formation of the New World/Caribbean/neotropical civilisations ICTA were destroyed by introduced diseases and genocide. This destroyed the mentifacts and sociofacts of these 2. to describe and analyse the evolution of ICTA New World civilisations. However, there existed at to UCWI and UWI the beginning of the 20th century within Trinidad and 3. to describe the institution’s contribution to the Tobago the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalist Club Caribbean and World Agriculture (TTFNC). It was formed on the 10 July 1891, lapsed into inactivity in 1907 and was reactivated in 1924 4. to highlight the scientists and their contributions (Carr 1991, Lambie 1991, Quesnel 1991a, Quesnel to the different agricultural disciplines 1991b). The club was and still is a volunteer, non-profit 5. to highlight the contributions made by ICTA- organisation. Its main objectives are to bring together UCWI-UWI to the developing society of persons interested in the study of natural history, the Trinidad and Tobago from an historical, diffusion of knowledge thereof and the conservation political and socio-economic perspective. of nature and natural resources. It was therefore not an institution of higher education or learning, but it laid The primary justification for this paper was simply that the foundation for an understanding of the biological this type of multidisciplinary up to date analysis of this evolving institution has never been done. 2 Conference Proceedings

Methodology used for the development of this paper Science from UWI based on his research at the SFC. In 1990 he accepted the position as a lecturer in animal The paper follows the thread of the five objectives production (Department of Livestock Science) and outlined above. As this account contains historical, taught in the Faculty of Agriculture (Science and political and socio-economic perspectives it has been Agriculture, Food and Agriculture) and the School of divided into three phases: Phase I (1921 to 1950), Veterinary Medicine from 1990 until retirement. He Phase II (1951 to 1990) and Phase III (1991 to 2021). became the Professor of Livestock Science in 2011 This is because the institution over the last 100 years and retired in 2019. The author has therefore imprinted has evolved within changing world and Caribbean his personal experiences into this social, historical, socio-economic circumstances that impacted on the educational and scientific account of UWI agriculture funding and management of the evolving institution. at St Augustine. The following two paragraphs mention some of the key literature consulted for the historical perspectives. Background to ICTA, UCWI and The UWI The OCLC.org in 2021 (http://worldcat.org/identities/ In 1921 ICTAwas established at StAugustine, Trinidad, lccn-n81046939/) indicated that there are 725 works West Indies. Ragbir and Duncan (2015), Gianetti in 787 publications in English on the subject of the (1974) and Hutchinson (1974) have given detailed Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture. These explanations of its establishment. In a nutshell however, include “A report on cacao research, 1945-1951 by it was because, the Trinidad and Tobago colony and the the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (Trinidad plantation owners therein were willing to give the land and Tobago)” and a book on “The Imperial College and financial resources for the establishment of the of Tropical Agriculture: silver jubilee”, 1951 by the institution. It was Sir Norman Lamont, (7 September Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (Trinidad 1869 to 3 September 1949), owner and operator of the and Tobago). Three other papers by Gianetti (1974), Palmiste Estate in Trinidad, who in 1902 first called Wilson (1974) and Hutchinson (1974) were found to attention to the need for establishing an agricultural be informative on the administration and development college in the tropics. He was also a Scottish Liberal of ICTA 1921 to 1959. Party politician who attended the Downton Agricultural College near Salisbury in 1890 and was a recognised There is a publication “Origin of the Faculty of Food authority on agriculture in Trinidad and Tobago. The and Agriculture at St Augustine” with a historical result was that plantation owners of Trinidad offered perspective of the period 1921 to 2012 (Ragbir and the land at St Augustine, and they raised £50,000 as Duncan, 2015). Another publication is “From Imperial the capital contribution for the building (Gianetti, College to University of the West Indies: a history of the 1974). The colony had an expanding crop plantation St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad & Tobago” (Brereton, agriculture base, an abundance of available land, a 2011). This latter document was more of an historical railway system and very good ports and infrastructure. account of the St Augustine Campus and did not focus Oil was also available, and this was important to on agriculture. All of these aforementioned documents Britain during the First World War, and Trinidad was provided very good historical accounts. the gateway for the British to South America. In addition to the above about 80 publications were Although the Spanish and French speaking Caribbean reviewed, from the grey, conference and journal had established universities before the establishment literature spanning the 100 year period. This exercise of ICTA in 1921, the University of Havana did not has also been somewhat personal as the author has introduce agriculture into its curriculum until the early been associated with UWI for 54 years from 1968 to 1960s. L’universite d’etat du Haiti was established the present and is now 68 years old. In 1968 the author in the 1820s, 101 years before the establishment of was in Form 2 and a member of the Queens Royal the ICTA. When these Spanish and French speaking College under 15 rugby team and had to journey to the universities were established their foci were on St Augustine campus to play and get rugby coaching. In the humanities, philosophy and law. In the British 1975 he entered the Faculty of Agriculture to read for controlled Caribbean, it was only in 1948 (410 years the B.Sc. General in Agriculture, from 1978 to 1990 he after the Spanish/Spain established its first university worked at the UWI-Mc Gill Sugarcane Feeds Centre (SFC). In 1988 he obtained the Ph.D. in Livestock Conference Proceedings 3

within the New World/Neo-tropics) that a University the land (with the possible exception of India). The was established in the ESC. This was the University land resource was categorised as Crown Lands to be College of the West Indies (UCWI) at Mona, Jamaica, distributed to persons who could satisfy the British which was linked to the University of London until industries’ agricultural needs. Trinidad was the last 1964. This was a post-World War II initiative. The of the Caribbean islands to be settled and developed foci of UCWI were science, medicine and humanities. through European expansion. It was a Nevis born graduate of the ICTA (1925), Professor Dudley Huggins (later Emeritus Professor Who financed the development of ICTA? Sir Dudley Huggins), who developed the Department of Economics and the Institute of Social and Economic ICTA was initially financed by the wealthy plantation Research (ISER) at UCWI, Mona in the 1950s, now owners of Trinidad (who made their fortunes from named the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and sugar and cocoa) and by the colony’s administration. Economic Research. He then went on to become the The British Government provided the scientific first Principal of the St Augustine campus of UWI, infrastructure and the educated and administrative St Augustine from 1962 to 1969. The first Professor personnel. It must again be mentioned here that up to of Agricultural Economics within the Department 1921 there were no institutions of higher education in of Agricultural Economics and Farm Management the ESC so that all the teaching and research staff had (Professor D. T. Edwards) was one of Professor to come from the United Kingdom. Further details on Huggins’ early Research Fellows at ISER at UCWI, the financing can be found in Gianetti (1974) who was Mona. UCWI awarded degrees out of the University the last Registrar of ICTA. of London until 1964. In 1960 the ICTA campus at St Augustine became the UCWI campus, St Augustine, Who were the first set of students and from where did with the formation of the Faculties of Agriculture, Arts, the catchment of students come? Social Sciences, Natural Sciences and Engineering. The Departments or disciplines of Chemistry and The undergraduate students came mainly from the Botany within the Faculty of Natural Sciences came ESC and the graduate students came from the United out of the Departments of Soil and Plant Science at Kingdom and the British Empire. This was the first ICTA. UCWI became an independent University, The opportunity for people within the ESC to get access to University of the West Indies (UWI), in 1962 with the higher education at the undergraduate level within the main campus at Mona, Jamaica and the second campus Caribbean. at St Augustine, Trinidad. What was the teaching agenda? Phase I: ICTA 1921 to 1950 (30 years) There were one undergraduate and two post graduate post-World War I to post-World War II - certifications. the British Empire phase 1) Diploma of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture (DICTA) (undergraduate) The social, historical, economic and political context This was a three-year course in tropical agricultural This period began during the immediate post-World of a very high standard almost equivalent to a War I period. The United Kingdom/Britain needed bachelor’s degree in 1921. This was principally for agricultural raw materials to service its industrial and Caribbean students, but students were accepted into tropical food needs and it also needed agricultural this programme from other countries within the British information and technology to satisfy the needs of Empire and South America. When ICTA became the agricultural industries within the tropical countries of Faculty of Agriculture in 1960 DICTA was converted the British Empire. Up to this point all the countries to the three-year degree in Agriculture. The UWI BSc within the British Empire were administered and General Degree in Agriculture from 1960 was built on or owned by Great Britain. These territories were the foundation of the teaching and research in tropical obtained after European wars and treaties over a agriculture experiences of the 40 years undergraduate period 400 years and many of these territories were teaching curriculum DICTA of ICTA. tropical colonies of the United Kingdom. The natives of these countries by and large did not own most of 4 Conference Proceedings

2) Diploma in Tropical Agriculture (DTA) 2. Over 100 acres of commercial grown sugarcane (postgraduate) at Orange Grove that supplied sugarcane to the teaching sugarcane factory at St Augustine This was a one-year course leading to the Diploma in Tropical Agriculture for British graduates destined to 3. A cocoa estate of over 100 acres at River Estate serve in the British colonies. in the northern end of the Diego Martin valley. 3) Associateship of the Imperial College of Tropical The major contributions of ICTA to agriculture Agriculture (AICTA) (postgraduate) within the British Empire and the Caribbean 1921 to 1950 This was a 2-year course leading to the Associateship of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture for British 1. The training of human resources to satisfy the graduates destined to serve in the British colonies. In needs of the Tropical Agricultural Industries the first year there was instruction in tropical agriculture of the British Empire (Asia, Africa, Caribbean and the applied sciences. The second year was devoted and Pacific colonies). This was in the area of to experimental work and a dissertation. Very similar plantation crops (cotton, sugarcane, bananas, to the presently taught M.Sc. programmes within the citrus, cocoa, coffee). Food crop production Faculty of Food and Agriculture, which contain course and livestock production and products were not work and a research project. priorities. Up until the 1920s, when ICTA was established, Venezuela was the major source of What was the research agenda? livestock and livestock products for Trinidad and Tobago (Thomas, 2016). This was essentially centred on the major export crops, and these were cocoa, bananas and sugarcane, and 2. The training of human resources to on soils (Gianette,1974). The research and training perform the roles of agricultural industry agenda was initially established by the scientists and administrators. Postgraduates of ICTA the plantation owners, it was not based on policy (DTAs and AICTAs) went on to become the directions from the British Government of the day, administrators and managers of agricultural but they supported and took notice of what was taking enterprises throughout the British Empire. place. In modern day language one could say that it was an initiative led by the private sector of Trinidad 3. The establishment of the Journal of Tropical and Tobago. One would like to suggest here that this Agriculture, which was first published in private sector initiative first benefited the private January 1924 and has been continuously sector in Trinidad and Tobago with the full support of published for the last 98 years. the British Government for about 40 years. This also contributed to the agricultural sectors of the British 4. The ICTA gave full support to the Commonwealth. Agricultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago which was founded in 1894 and incorporated The land/living field laboratories of ICTA up to in 1919. The scientific staff of the ICTA 1950 continuously contributed to the Journal of the Agricultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago, The land resources of the ICTA at this time were made wherein most of the early history of agriculture up of the following: in Trinidad and Tobago in the 20th century has been recorded. 1. A 250 acre field station at Valsayn, containing pastures to support a 150 milking cow dairy herd 5. The ICTAalso collaborated with the TTFNC. (for scientific purposes in the humid tropics, Over the years the zoology collection and Wilson and Houghton, 1961), an intensively museum within the Departments of Biological managed piggery, four poultry pens, a citrus Sciences or Life Sciences arose out of this orchard, a tropical crop museum (Oaks tropical initiative. forage germplasm collection) and experimental plots for tropical crops including rice 6. The conduct of research for the improvement of the production of tropical plantation crops that was needed to service the British Conference Proceedings 5

agricultural processing and industrial complex 13. The early teaching material and texts for the was done. production of tropical crops were written and developed at St Augustine. 7. There was the improvement in the production and breeding of cocoa and the 14. Research into tropical animal science was establishment of the Cocoa Research Unit initiated in the late 1940s (Wilson 1974). and the International Cocoa Germplasm Bank. This also led to success in finding The National Herbarium of Trinidad and Tobago varieties or clones that were successful in was brought to the ICTA campus between 1947 and combating the witches broom disease. This 1950. In March 1887, the Herbarium was formally was an effort that also involved the Department set up at the Royal Botanic Gardens, St. Clair, Port of of Agriculture of Trinidad and Tobago (Bekele, Spain. After the establishment of ICTA at St. Augustine, 2004). Professors Sydney Harland and Frank the Professor of Botany, E.E. Cheesman, together with Cope made significant contributions in this W.G. Freeman and R.O. Williams of the Department area. of Agriculture of Trinidad and Tobago began to work on the publication of the flora for Trinidad and Tobago 8. The Citrus Research Unit was established. based on these collections. The necessary research During and after the Second World War the and further collections were undertaken by these UK was a major market for canned citrus men outside their normal teaching and administrative juice from Trinidad and Tobago. As citrus is activities. The first volume of the Flora of Trinidad and not native to the Caribbean this unit supported Tobago was published in 1928. In keeping with the the establishment and expansion of the citrus expansion of botanical research at ICTA after World industry in Trinidad. It was closed in Phase III. War II, the herbarium was transferred from St. Clair to St. Augustine in July 1947. The collections were first 9. The Musa cultivars (banana germplasm) housed in the Plant Pathology Department. When the world collection was established at St Sir Frank Stockdale building was added to the college, Augustine. This provided the support for the provisions were made to accommodate the Herbarium, expansion of the banana industries of the ESC. which moved into residence in September 1950. The Later the Windward Islands BananaAssociation Herbarium has been operating from this building up to (WINBAN) and the banana industry in Jamaica the present time (https://sta.uwi.edu/herbarium/about). developed research capacity to service their respective banana industries. This collection The areas surrounding the ICTA campus housed all was closed in Phase II. the expatriate staff including those that worked in the Herbarium. These persons came mostly (but not 10. Contributions were made to the development entirely) from the United Kingdom, and many had of the forest plantations as water catchment worked in other tropical countries around the world. areas in Trinidad with the introduction and The St Augustine campus of ICTA and the surrounding production of the imported non-native high residences became an unofficial botanic gardens with value wood species, Caribbean pine (Pinus plant identification being provided by the Herbarium. caribbeana) and teak (Tecktona grandis) Today the Herbarium is one of the important and along with other species. valuable hidden resources of UWI Faculty of Food and Agriculture. 11. There was the development and operation of a model sugar factory, supported by British Some of the major contributors to the above efforts and industry, that trained sugar technologists successes for the British Empire This was discontinued During this period, the major contributors to the during Phase II. teaching and research efforts were mainly persons of British origin and nationality. Some of these are listed 12. ICTA became the major institution for below. the teaching and research in the primary production of tropical plantation crops within the British Empire. 6 Conference Proceedings

Sir Norman Lamont was the visionary and founder of fees. The year 1962 onwards saw Britain giving ICTA and was considered the Governor from 1921 to political independence to the British Territories in the 1945. Caribbean, Central America and South America/the Sir Francis Watts was the first Principal, who neotropical territories. In this same year UCWI became suggested and or encouraged the academics and not the UWI and the financial responsibility for agricultural administrators to set the teaching and research agenda. teaching and research at St Augustine became that of Professor Thomas Hardy pioneered the understanding the newly independent countries and Caribbean British of tropical soils and taught into Phase II. territories. During this period there was considerable financial assistance coming from international donor Professor E. E. Cheesman was very active in cocoa agencies with their own agenda and not necessarily breeding and production. that of the English speaking Caribbean territories and Emeritus Professor Frank Cope was active in the cocoa newly independent countries. germplasm collection and breeding, he also taught into This period saw agriculture at St Augustine moving Phase II, until 1976. from being an education, training and research centre for tropical agriculture as ICTA, which was in the Professor Sydney Harland was active in plant breeding, service of the British Government to meet the demands social and community interaction and as a result he was of the British Empire, to a Faculty of Agriculture very controversial as he got married to a local Chinese within an emerging university (UCWI-UWI). This lady. Professor D. D. Paterson pioneered the understanding was now to serve the higher education needs of 10 of tropical forages and fodder crops. to 14 Caribbean neotropical countries. When this Dr John Duckworth was regarded as the foundation transition began these countries were all still British stone for the development and teaching of animal Colonies which would become independent countries production, tropical animal science and tropical grasses within this phase. Therefore, a lot was expected from at ICTA. St Augustine agriculture within an emerging university with competition amongst the faculties for resources, Phase II: 1951 to 1990 (40 years) with agriculture having land, an internationally ICTA-UCWI-UWI post-World War II recognised library and other infrastructure. This The social, historical, socio-economic and political competition amongst the faculties for resources was context the foreshadowing of developments during Phase III This Phase could be casually classified as the post- of this institution. World War II period and the beginning of the granting From where did the catchment of students come? of independence by Britain to her colonies in the Caribbean, Central and South America. During this second phase the catchment of students came mainly from the ESC. There were only a few How was this phase financed? undergraduate and post graduate students from Asia, This phase began within the last 10 years of ICTA Africa and the Pacific. One outstanding student from and with full British Government funding during Africa during this period was Dr Moses Simwambana this time. The scientific and teaching staff were still who completed the B.Sc. General Agriculture (1975 to in the main British citizens with a few local clerical 1979) and Ph.D. in Crop Science (circa 1991) and went staff and technicians. In 1951 the ICTA campus was a on to lead the cassava and root crops programme in British enclave within a British colony (Trinidad and Zambia. Tobago) at a time when primary and secondary school What was the teaching agenda? education was not yet universal and there were no other institutions of higher learning in the country. During this phase, the teaching agenda could be divided into three periods: the transition period - 1951 to 1959; The year 1960 saw the ICTA campus at St Augustine the early period of the Faculty of Agriculture UCWI- become the UCWI campus and this transition UWI - 1960 to 1975; the later period of the Faculty was initially financed by Britain, the Trinidad and of Agriculture UWI 1976 onwards - the new degree Tobago Government, international donor agencies system. and by Caribbean territories through student tuition Conference Proceedings 7

The transition period 1951 to 1959, the continua- and each term lasted for 10 weeks, with 9 weeks of tion of the ICTA agenda teaching and 1 week of examinations. This was similar to the secondary school system within the ESC. This Gianetti (1974) reported that up to 1961, ICTA from its was a very rigorous examination process. In the final inception, had admitted 1570 students, of whom 265 year students also had to conduct year-long research had been awarded undergraduate and 765 postgraduate projects, which were similar to the present M.Sc. qualifications. Up until this time it was in the main research projects. This approach was also continued a post graduate institution, within a country that did into the semester system and the Faculty of Agriculture not yet have universal secondary school education was also the first faculty in UWI to fully adopt the and no other institutions of higher learning in science. semester system in the latter part of the 1980s. The However, all the ICTA graduates went on to serve academic year was made up of two semesters, with within the British Empire as the focus of this institution each semester made up of 13 weeks of teaching and 3 was not necessarily that of the ESC colonies at the time. weeks of examinations. Thus, it could be assumed that the agenda during this period was still the primary production of plantation Collaborative post graduate training was developed crops, with no emphasis on added value or food crops. with two North American universities: McDonald The focus on livestock and livestock products was now College of Mc Gill University and the University of beginning. Wisconsin Faculty of Agriculture at Madison. Early period of the Faculty of Agriculture, UC- Under the McDonald College postgraduate WI-UWI 1960 to 1973 collaboration: candidates graduating with the soils option were admitted into a two to three-year programme The teaching agenda was mainly the three-year to do the M.Sc. in Agricultural Engineering, with the undergraduate General Degree in Tropical Agriculture focus on irrigation and drainage while candidates with four optional areas, crops, soils, extension and graduating with the livestock option pursued the M.Sc. economics and livestock (the First or the Old Degree). in Animal Nutrition/Animal Science or Breeding. The All final examinations were held at the end of the research projects had to be conducted in a Caribbean academic year and there were four departments: Soils, territory. This collaboration with McDonald College Crop Science, Livestock Science and Agricultural of Mc Gill University led to the Development of the Economics and Farm Management. In 1968 the latter UWI-McGill Sugarcane Feeds Centre (SFC) funded department was split into the Department ofAgricultural from 1976 to 1981 by the Canadian International Extension and the Department of Agricultural Development Agency (CIDA) and the Government Economics, so that the Faculty of Agriculture now had of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (GORTT). five departments. Then post October 1981 the SFC was fully funded by GORTT. Post Graduate teaching and research consisted mainly of postgraduate (Masters and PhD degrees) by research The main collaborators from McDonald College and dissertations. Course taught masters and diplomas were Professors R Broughton and E Donefer. The were only introduced during the latter part of this local counterpart was Professor H. E. Williams of period in Crop Protection, Agricultural Economics and the Department of Livestock Science. This initiative a Diploma in Extension. which developed as an international aid development project (not research or training) has continued for over The later period of the Faculty of Agriculture, UWI 45 years (1976 to present). It has developed into an 1974 to 1990 - the new degree system important CARICOM institution that has contributed During this period courses were made up of units and to the development of livestock agriculture training, were taught and examined in three (3) terms. There research and development in Trinidad and Tobago and was no longer a final examination period at the end of the Caribbean. The author of this paper was one of the the year. The Faculty of Agriculture from 1974 was the graduate students who benefitted from this project. first faculty in the UWI system to teach courses within With the University of Wisconsin, the focus was on a unit system with examinations held at the end of each masters and Ph.D degrees in agricultural extension term. There were three terms in each academic year and rural sociology. 8 Conference Proceedings

During this period, the German Government Head of the Department of Agricultural Extension in supported research on the understanding of tropical the 1970s. soils. Although this did not have any teaching or demonstration components, they contributed towards The major contributions of ICTA and Faculty of the infrastructure for the development of the soils Agriculture, UCWI-UWI to the Caribbean and laboratories and the training of post graduate students. world agriculture during 1951 to 1990 The Canadian Government was also responsible for This 40 year period that straddled the colonial, pre- the post graduate training of a soil chemist (Dr Selwyn independence and early post-independence periods Griffith) and the facilitation of the development of the for the ESC countries was a very productive period Soil Chemistry Laboratory in the Department of Soil for the agriculture at St Augustine. A great deal was Science. Dr Griffith then pioneered the work in soil accomplished during this time. The following is a list organic matter content and developed the Stircology of accomplishments. Unit at the UWI Field Station, Valsayn. 1. Human resource development without What was the research agenda? empowerment for the Caribbean and CARICOM economies. Similar to the Phase Academic staff were employed to teach with research I period, this involved the training of human being a by-product. The irony of the situation was and resources to satisfy the needs of the tropical still is that academic staff were and are employed to agricultural industries of the English teach primarily undergraduate courses, but academic speaking Caribbean economies in the area staff have been evaluated based on their research of plantation crops and the training of human output. This has been a UWI wide issue. A proper and resources to perform the roles of agricultural informed statement on the research agenda cannot industry administrators and scientists. be objectively made about this period as much of the documentation on the faculty for this period has been 2. The focus for the first time on tropical animal difficult to access. production from a Caribbean perspective and the importance of livestock production The land/living field laboratories of UCWI-UWI and the use of grasses. Wilson (1974) reported 1951 to 1990 that the ICTA did not see it fit to appoint a member of staff related to livestock science During this period, the land resources of UWI were until the post-World War II years. reduced to a 95 acre Field Station farm at Valsayn, containing pastures to support a 150 cow dairy herd, 3. The training of agriculture personnel from a tropical crop museum and experimental plots for within the ESC to fill the agricultural tropical crops. The original farm lost about 150 acres administrative and managerial positions in the early 1980s for the establishment of the Eric post-independence within the British Williams Medical Sciences Complex and highway Caribbean colonies. This is self-explanatory infrastructure. In addition, the River Estate and the and does not need any further elaboration sugarcane land were lost to the government with and is significant in part because the initial a promise that land would be reassigned to UWI ICTA teaching and research agenda was not to sometime in the future. This meant that during this develop agricultural entrepreneurs or farmers 40 year period UWI Faculty of Agriculture lost to for the British Caribbean economies. This was the Government about 350 acres of land over three because post-independence the children of locations. farmers did not choose to go to the university to study agriculture. These properties were managed by a field station manager, and in 1960 this person was Thomas 4. The first definitive texts on tropical crops Henderson, who was from Dominica and an ICTA were published by J.W. Purseglove. These graduate, who later obtained his PhD in Agricultural were (i) Purseglove, J.W. (1968): Tropical Crops Extension from Cornell University and who then Dicotyledons, Volumes 1 and 2, Longman and became the Director of Agricultural Extension and the (ii) Purseglove, J. W. (1972): Tropical Crops Conference Proceedings 9

Monocotyledons, Volumes 1 and 2, Longman. Economics and Farm Management, then under J. W. Purseglove was a botanist trained in the direction of Professor David Edwards. England and a postgraduate of ICTA, where he The conference series was initiated by the completed the 9 month DTA programme. He department in 1966 to provide a forum for the built on his notes from the ICTA and on his discussion of regional agricultural problems. later working experience at ICTA after having The first conference was not based on any been the curator of the Singapore Botanic specific theme; however, it attracted 20 overseas Gardens (Purseglove 1959). The work focused participants and 24 local participants. Such on the plantation and export crops from within was its success that it was agreed that future the tropical British Empire. The focus was on conferences should be held annually. This cotton, cocoa (Cocoa Research Unit), rubber, society, which held the conferences, became tomato, tea, coffee, citrus (Citrus Research the Caribbean Agro-Economics Society in Unit), nutmeg, pigeon peas, papaya, sweet 1974. Conferences have been held regularly potatoes, sugarcane and others. The texts were since 1966, albeit usually biennially rather than evaluated by all the experts in these areas who annually (Pemberton 2015). worked at the ICTA between 1921 and 1960. 10. Regional livestock meetings were initiated in 5. Wilson and Houghton (1961) reported on 1975 by the Department of Livestock Science the development of the first teaching and under the Direction of Professor Holman research dairy herd in Trinidad. Unlike Asia Williams and in collaboration with the regional and Europe beef cattle, dairy cattle and water ministries of agriculture (Anon 1975, 1978, buffaloes were not native to the New World, 1980b, 1982, 1984). The last one was held in Neo-tropics or Caribbean. There was therefore 1988 at the Sugarcane Feeds Centre but the no native or community knowledge of these proceedings were never published or circulated. animals for milk production. Sir Norman Lamont, one of the founders of the ICTA had 11. Staff contributed to the formation of the a private herd of dairy cattle on his Palmiste International Root Crops Society (Emeritus Estate, but when he died in 1947 his estate was Professor Lawrence A. Wilson). disposed of. 12. The development and running of the 6. Emeritus Professor Holman Williams worked Caribbean Regional Extension In Service towards the development of simple protocols Training was undertaken by Professor Thomas for the control of tick borne diseases of dairy Henderson and the Department of Agricultural cattle (Williams 1966, 1968). This was very Extension that was formed in 1968 out of the important for the success of the State Lands Department of Agricultural Economics and Dairy Development Project in Trinidad and Farm Management. Tobago. 13. The development of The Extension 7. Wilson (1974) indicated that for the first time Newsletter, that contained agricultural extensive publications on animal husbandry extension information for the English Speaking and production in the tropics were done and Caribbean (ESC), was produced, printed and reported on at the ICTA. circulated by the Department of Agricultural Extension. This was circulated throughout the 8. Soil and land capability studies were done by ESC from about 1970 until the closure of the the Department of Soil Science for Trinidad department in 1996. and Tobago and the countries of the Windward and Leeward Islands. 14. The Leeward Islands Extension and Outreach Programme was developed with 9. The first West IndiesAgricultural Economics Dr St Clair Barker as the extension specialist Conference led to the Development of the West on site. This programme was discontinued Indian Agricultural Economics Society. This with the merger of the Faculties of Agriculture took place within the Department ofAgricultural and Natural Sciences in 1996. This provided 10 Conference Proceedings

agricultural extension linkages between the tropical small ruminants when he passed away Faculty of Agriculture and the farmers and in 2021. This is a good example of how a staff governments of the Leeward Islands. member focusing on research alone could 15. Rapid reconnaissance surveys and sondeos advance a discipline by just observing what and regional extension programmes has been done and what was taking place by (CAYEP) were conducted (Dr P I Gomes and the institutions within his surroundings. In his Dr David Dolly) (Dolly, 1988). This was a case this was the dairy goat farmers’ initiatives series of exercises that helped the extension and those of the Departments of Agriculture of services to use a multidisciplinary approach Barbados, Guyana (British Guyana), Jamaica in getting a better understanding of the farmer and Trinidad and Tobago. problems and needs in order to find solutions. 18. In the early 1970s Professor Lawrence A. 16. In 1963 academic staff contributed to the Wilson introduced the root crops germplasm formation of the Caribbean Food Crops collections (yams, sweet potatoes, cassava) at Society which has held annual meetings the University Field Station and developed the since then. This society through its meetings “Tropical Commodity Utilisation Programme” has helped to bridge the gap between the around these crops. Dr (later Professor) Laura agricultural scientists of the French, Spanish, Roberts-Nkrumah, Dr Lynda Wickham and Dutch and English speaking Caribbean. The Dr (later Professor) Majeed Mohammed were focus was originally on food and plantation the post graduate students who pioneered the crops, however, since the 1990s the meetings work in this area within the UWI system at St have included all sectors of agriculture. This Augustine. has promoted inter and multidisciplinary 19. The work with Tropical Grain Legumes dialogue. that was spearheaded by Emeritus Professor 17. Dr Canagasaby Devendra, who was a John Spence was featured at the Sixth Annual Research Fellow in the Department of Livestock Meeting of the Caribbean Food Crops Society Science DFP between 1968 and 1973, brought (Anon 1968) and the ThirteenthAnnual Meeting to the attention of the Caribbean agricultural of the Caribbean Food Crops Society both held economies and the tropical world the in Trinidad and Tobago (Anon 1980a). importance and usefulness to the tropics 20. Extensive work on Tropical Clay Soils was of domesticated small ruminants (sheep done by Emeritus Professor Nazir Ahmad and and goats). Domestic small ruminants were this was highlighted in a publication “Tropical not native to the Caribbean/New World/Neo- Clay Soils, their use and management” (Ahmad, tropics. Dr Devendra, however, paid careful 1984). attention to what research and production 21. First International Conference on Leucaena was taking place within the departments of and the OAS Regional Leucaena Programme agriculture of the ESC. There was a lot of good (Dr T. Ferguson, Dr K.A.E Archibald and Dr work going on with small ruminants in Trinidad, Gary Wayne Garcia) was held at St Augustine Jamaica and Guyana. During the short period (Ferguson and Garcia, 1992). that he stayed within the Faculty of Agriculture he wrote in excess of 20 papers and contributed 22. The Regional Leucaena Germplasm to two books. There were four seminal papers Collection at the University Field Station published by him from this period; Devendra (UFS) was established (this was supported by and Chenost (1973) and Devendra (1975) (both the OAS Regional Leucaena Project but the published in German Journals), Devendra and germplasm was destroyed due to poor policy Rankine (1971) in the Journal of theAgricultural and management at the UFS). Society of Trinidad and Tobago and Devendra 23. As already noted above the UWI-Mc Gill (1977) in World Review of Animal Production. Sugarcane Feeds Centre was established in He was considered the world authority on 1976 Conference Proceedings 11

24. There was an important workshop that an academic staff member at the University of highlighted the work on feeding of animals Guelph, Ontario, Canada and the University in the Caribbean, SFC, CARDI and UWI of Ibadan, Nigeria. The study indicated that (Neckles et al. 1983). the UWI Faculty of Agriculture needed to train about 100 agriculture graduates per year 25. The Department of Livestock Science in order to meet the needs of the CARICOM participated in the Blenheim Sheep Project in countries. During the mid-1970s when this Tobago. study was conducted the faculty was only graduating between 50 to 60 graduates per year. 26. The School of Veterinary Medicine to This meant that sufficient agriculture graduates serve the English Speaking Caribbean was were not being trained for the ESC to be able to developed through the initiative of Dr Vincent drive and expand agricultural production. Moe (Chief Veterinary Officer of the Ministry of Agriculture of Trinidad and Tobago) and 31. The discipline of weed science was introduced Professor Holman E. Williams (Department of into the agricultural curriculum by Emeritus Livestock Science) in 1989. Professor Richard A I Brathwaite. 27. Tissue cultures of breadfruit (Artocarpus 32. Professor R.A.I. Brathwaite was the first altilis) and carambola (Averrhoa carambola) to show the relationship between food and other tropical fruits were pioneered by production (through the production of sweet Professor Emeritus Julian Duncan. corn) and the carnival festival in Trinidad 28. In 1953 three of the regional (crop) research and Tobago. schemes became merged into the Regional 33. Collaboration (both informal and formal) Research Centre (RRC), which later became with the respective ministries of agriculture the Caribbean Agricultural Research and of the newly independent ESC countries was Development Institute (CARDI) in 1975. undertaken. This institution still continues to serve 14 (i) Many postgraduate research projects CARICOM countries. came out of this. An outstanding 29. UWI academic staff contributed towards the example was the 40 acre forage project initiation and development of the agriculture at Centeno Livestock Station, Waller degree at the Anton de Kom University of Field, under the Ministry of Agriculture, Suriname. Professor Nazir Ahamad, Dr Keith Lands and Marine Resources of Archibald and Dr Theodore Ferguson, all Trinidad and Tobago. This resulted participated in this exercise and taught the first in the award of a number of M.Phil. cohort of students in this programme. One of and M.Sc. degrees. The collaborators these students (Rick van Ravensway) went on on these were Dr Francis Davis and to do his PhD and later became the Minister of Hugh Wilson of the Ministry and Dr Planning and Development in Suriname. Keith Archibald of the Department of Livestock Science, UWI. Four members 30. A study for the agriculture manpower of staff from the Ministry were awarded training needs for CARICOM was conducted FAO Scholarships to pursue M.Sc/M. by Professor D.T. Edwards and Dr Ashton Phil degrees in forage production and Wood. Professor D.T. Edwards was the utilisation at UWI. retired Professor of Agricultural Economics (ii) The Tropical Pasture Agronomy and Farm Management who had extensive course for CARICOM, was a two- experience in Caribbean Agriculture. Dr week exercise organised and conducted Ashton Wood was the first black Jamaican by Dr Keith Archibald from UWI and to be the Principal of the Jamaica School Drs Peter Whiteman, Barry Norton of Agriculture (JSA), the oldest and most and Ian Wallace from the University established school of agriculture in the ESC. of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Dr Wood was also a graduate of JSA and was 12 Conference Proceedings

This was a course that was previously operated at two levels, under 15 and under 19, today presented to Pacific island students it operates at the under 14 and under 18 levels. This for a number of years. The course was built on the established Trinidad and Tobago Rugby presented to 29 participants from all Football Union that was formed in 1928 following CARICOM countries in June and July activities that started at ICTA in 1922. The best rugby 1980. pitch in the country was at the playing field in front of Freedom Hall (formerly Milner Hall), UWI Campus, (iii) The Corn and Soya Project of the St Augustine. Government of Trinidad and Tobago received technical assistance from the Henderson and Mahabir (1976) of the Department of Faculty through Emeritus Professor Agricultural Extension documented “Fifty Years of R. A. I. Brathwaite. This has led to Research in Tropical Agriculture: A Bibliography Trinidad and Tobago today being very - 1922 to 1972”. This was a documentation of 2,573 capable of producing sweet corn for the titles arranged in alphabetical order. It was a mammoth table. He also developed a UWI sweet task before the days of computers. corn variety at the University Field Station. This is another hidden resource Professor John Spence as Dean of the Faculty of of the Faculty of Agriculture/Faculty of Agriculture was the Chairman of the Sugarcane Food and Agriculture. Diversification Committee for the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. This committee (iv) The development of the State Lands produced a report that became known as the Spence Agriculture Project (early 1960s) was Report. heavily dependent on the technical inputs from the Faculty of Agriculture The National Institute of Higher Education Research and the training of the manpower Science and Technology (NIHERST) of Trinidad and required. Tobago, UWI and the Ministry of Food Production, Marine Exploitation, Forestry and the Environment (v) The development of the treatment from 1987 organised the Annual Seminar on protocol for tick fever or red water Agricultural Research. This ran for more than a disease for the imported Holstein decade and much of the work of UWI was reported dairy cattle into Trinidad by Emeritus on at these meetings. Some of the proceedings are Professor Holman Williams (Williams available (Anon, 1987a, Anon, 1987b, Anon 1988a, 1966, Williams 1968). Anon 1988b, Anon 89, Anon 91). (vi) Another example of collaboration The agriculture students of UWI formed the Harland was the Ebini Livestock Development Society which was the first student club on the St Project in the Republic of Guyana, Augustine Campus. The Harland Society Farmers Dr H. Harricharan got his Ph.D. in Diary was published from 1965 to 1980 (Anon 1965 Livestock Science from this. to 1980). It was produced by the students and funded by the private sector. It was the annual gift from the Social contributions of the Faculty of Agriculture, students to the farmers of Trinidad and Tobago. UWI to the Caribbean during 1951 to 1990 Some of the major contributors to the above efforts Professor D.T. Edwards (of the Department of and successes Agricultural Economics and Farm Management), Dan Chalmers of the Cocoa Research Unit (ICTA- The publications of Professor Purseglove (the first UCWI-UWI), William (Bill) Bason (Queens Royal Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture UCWI) have College geography master) and Garvin Clarke (an already been mentioned. In the 1950 to 1990 period English quantity surveyor) formed the Schools Rugby the accomplishments of Dean Professor Lawrence A. Football Union of Trinidad and Tobago. They Wilson were most noteworthy. As Dean of the Faculty developed a league amongst the secondary schools of Agriculture and specialist in tropical commodity and the Youth Training Centre in Trinidad; the league utilisation, he was also the Chair of the International Conference Proceedings 13

Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) at Ibadan, Uruguay rounds of the General Agreement on Tariffs Nigeria and the Chair of the Board of Governors of and Trade (GATT). This then led to the formation of the the Consortium Group on International Agricultural World Trade Organization (WTO) which has put many Research (CGIAR) centres. developing countries agriculture at a disadvantage. In the methodology the relationship which the author has Emeritus Professors Nazeer Ahmad (Guyana) in soils, had with UWI from 1968 to the present was explained. Julian Duncan (St Vincent) in the development of tissue Having joined the Department of Livestock Science in culture of trees, John Spence (Trinidad and Tobago) as 1990 and retired in 2019, he lived through this period, Dean and as an Independent Senator for Agriculture, hence the justification for the title of this Phase. The Richard A. I. Brathwaite (Barbados) in crop production, important Department of Livestock Science along with Thomas Henderson (Dominica) for the expansion of the Department of Agricultural Extension was closed agricultural extension in the Caribbean and Holman with the merger of the Faculties of Natural Sciences E. Williams (Barbados and Martinique), whose father and Agriculture in 1996. Although the author retired was in the second cohort of DICTA, for livestock and as Professor of Livestock Science in 2019 he is still veterinary medicine, were all from the ESC. Professor actively supervising M.Sc., M.Phil. and Ph.D. students Mahadevan (India) worked with Dr Karl Wellington of because of the shortage of livestock staff in the Faculty. Jamaica (the first Ph.D. graduate in Livestock Science) At the time of writing this paper there was only one full to document the development of the Jamaica Hope time member of livestock academic staff in the faculty. breed of dairy cattle in Jamaica (Wellington 1968, Wellington and Mahadevan 1975). This Phase can be further subdivided into the following three periods that are described below. In was in this same period that Emeritus Professor Holman Williams Junior initiated the UWI-Mc Period 1 (1991 to 1996) pre-merger. Gill Sugarcane Feeds Centre and the UWI School of Veterinary Medicine. Professor Williams also This was the period of turbulence due to globalisation. established the first two herds of Jamaica Hope Dairy During this period that faculty was put under tremendous cattle outside of Jamaica at the University Field Station pressure by the other faculties because of low and Farm and at the Palo Seco Agricultural Enterprises declining enrolment into the agriculture degrees, Ltd. Farm in south Trinidad (Garcia et al 1993). this was also being experienced by other agriculture Professor Williams received funding from the French faculties within the universities of developing Government to train staff for the establishment of a countries. During this time the Animal Production, rabbit production unit at the University Field Station. Agribusiness Management and the Human Ecology The latter was very strategic and tactical as rabbits and Home Economics degrees were developed. were easy to produce but were not at the time a popular cuisine in ESC countries. Period 2 (1996 to 2012) merger of the Faculties of Agriculture and Natural Sciences Phase III: 1991 to 2021 (30 years) globalisation and This was the period when agriculture management post-globalisation and the Gary Wayne Garcia experi- and decisions about agriculture at the university ence at St Augustine level were being made by non-agriculture academics and administrators. This occurred when on 1 August The social, historical, socio-economic and political 1996 the Faculty of Agriculture was merged with the context Faculty of Natural Sciences. It should be noted that the Biological and Chemistry Departments within the This period can be seen as the period that began within Faculty of Natural Sciences arose out of the ICTA. years of turbulence, the acceptance by the world and Emeritus Professor John Spence reported that this the expansion of globalisation and the reorganisation merger had disastrous consequences and that the within the UWI system. This all led to institutional authorities of UWI and the CARICOM governments uncertainty for the Faculty ofAgriculture. Globalisation were both responsible for virtually destroying regional saw all developing countries agreeing to remove public agriculture teaching and research capabilities (Spence expenditure support to their agriculture extension 2002, in Renwick and Rajah, 2017). This happened at infrastructure and the removal of tariffs as a result of the a time when the Minister of Agriculture of Trinidad 14 Conference Proceedings

and Tobago (Dr Reza Mohammed) was a graduate and in Agriculture. Additionally, the Republic of Venezuela postgraduate of the Faculty of Agriculture. This saw began offering scholarships to CARICOM students to the loss of control in the decision making on agriculture study agriculture. by the academic staff of the former faculty and resulting in external decision making. The sentiment Who were the target students and catchment area? expressed was “Agriculture should be downsized at St Augustine.” This is a quotation from the Dean of The main catchment area for students was now Trinidad the merged Faculty of Science and Agriculture (Dr and Tobago. Charles Mc David, Senior Lecturer in Plant Science) and the then Campus Principal (Professor Compton What was the teaching agenda? Bourne, Economics and Management), However, after the merger Professor John Agard conducted a There was an attempt to introduce technology and study that concluded that the University of the West disciplinary based degrees, Agronomy, Animal Indies was first and foremost known worldwide for its Production and Agribusiness. The most popular was agriculture degree and its research in Agriculture. This the Agribusiness Management, but this degree had less was reported to the Board of the merged Faculty. than five agriculture courses within it. It was basically a management degree with a flavour of agriculture. Period 3 (2012 to 2021) re-establishing the A programme in Human Ecology, Human Nutrition independence of the Faculty of Food andAgriculture and Dietetics and Home Economics was introduced around 1992. This was in response to the demand by This period saw the demerger of the two formerly the school and health care system for expertise and merged faculties (Faculty of Agriculture and Faculty teachers in human nutrition and home economics. of Natural Sciences). Dr Laura Roberts-Nkrumah as This programme was developed in the Department of the Head of the Department of Food Production was Livestock Science under the leadership of Professor instrumental and strategic in the process of initiating Eugene Crichlow (this department contained animal this demerger, with the support of the then Campus physiologists, nutritionists and production specialists) Principal, Professor Clement A. Sankat. The newly with support from Dr Curtis McIntosh of the Caribbean formed Faculty of Food and Agriculture had three Food and Nutrition Institute (CFNI) and other members departments. The first being a new Department of of the faculty. When the Faculty of Agriculture and the Geography, coming out of the former Department of Faculty of Natural Sciences were merged in August Food Production (which was the formerly merged 1996 this programme went into the merged Department departments of Soil Science, Crop Science and of Agricultural Extension and Economics. This was Livestock Science). The other two departments were the beginning of the disaster as this department had the Department of Food Production and the Department no life or biological science expertise. This merger of Agricultural Economics and Extension, the latter also weakened the agricultural extension initiatives was the former merged Departments of Agricultural and activities that were developed since 1968 (over 20 Extension and of Agricultural Economics and Farm years of work went down the drain). Management. This seemed to be an evolving game of department musical chairs. What was lacking within the teaching agenda? Who financed the further development of The Fac- During Phase I of ICTA-UCWI-UWI the teaching ulty of Agriculture and the UWI system during agenda was focused and clear. It was to teach persons Phase III? to produce and expand the production of tropical plantation crops. This was done with a science During Phase III there was the greater dependence foundation first and then there was the practical of the St Augustine Campus on the financing from application of the science. the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The student intake into the Faculty from the During Phase III, the teaching agenda became very CARICOM countries also declined. In addition, there confused as agriculture teaching now had to be mixed was competition for local students from the University into a multiple faculty university teaching matrix. of Trinidad and Tobago, who also began offering a BSc This meant that teaching time had to be given up so Conference Proceedings 15

that other university courses could be included into 8. with regard to (6), in 1995 it was decided that the agriculture syllabus. The agriculture teaching the focus in the main would be neo-tropical methodologies became confused as UWI and the non-domestic animals (wildlife conservation, faculty was now driven by the “politics” (power, production and utilisation), the Muscovy duck, rule and authority) within the university system. carnival food, and agriculture and livestock Therefore, what was lacking was a focus on agriculture commodity utilisation. and a proper understanding and appreciation of the The research during this period was disorganised and multifunctionality of agriculture (Garcia 2018-2019a, the academic staff operated as individuals and not as Garcia 2018-2019b, Garcia 2018-2019c). research teams, the teamwork was all opportunistic and What was the research agenda? not focused on achieving specific objectives, but instead There was some Lomé Funding for research within an on attaining selfish ends. There was poor leadership M.Sc. programme in Agricultural Diversification and at the level of the departments and the dean’s office. Commodity Utilisation (all crop based). There was However, as stated above the Livestock Unit within the also a CIDA funded project for Caribbean food security Department of Food Production operated as a team and in collaboration with McDonald College of Mc Gill achieved its objectives in spite of being denied access University which involved only the Department of to faculty’s financial resources and projects. Agricultural Economics and Extension with no input The land/living field laboratories of UWI 1991 to from the Department of Food Production. Abstracts 2021 from the above programme can be found in Anon In the previous Phase the land resources of the Faculty (2013). of Agriculture/Faculty of Science and Agriculture UWI were reduced to a 95 acre farm that was the Field During this period academic staff members had to Station at Valsayn. No more land was lost. However, become innovative and create their own research during the 1990s the breadfruit germplasm which agenda and find their own individual funding. The was established in the 1980s was threatened with experience of the author developed a logical approach. destruction for future power lines, this however, was The elements of this approach were: 1. Develop an M.Sc. programme (M.Sc. in avoided due to the timely intervention by Alexander Tropical Animal Science and Production, 1995 Benn, the then Farm Coordinator. to present) In the late 1990s, 200 acres of land at Golden Grove, 2. Design the programme so that it could be Trincity, was allocated to the faculty by the Government offered either in full time or part time (within of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. This was the evenings 5:00 to 9:00 pm mode in exchange for the land lost in the 1960s and the 3. develop a team of committed teaching personnel 1980s. This (200 acres) was almost given back to the using both full time and part time lecturers from government by the then Campus Principal, Professor other faculties and the agricultural industry Compton Bourne, who presided over the merger of the Faculties of Agriculture and Natural Sciences 4. encourage the students to develop, to the in 1996. However, later the Faculty of Science and greatest extent possible, their research projects Agriculture took possession of the land under Dean, Professor Dyer Narinesingh, and the area was fenced. within their place of work In 2012 when the Faculty of Science and Agriculture 5. encourage the students to conceptualise an was separated to re-establish the Faculty of Food and M.Sc. research project in an area that could be Agriculture and further development of the field station further developed into an M.Phil or PhD. at Trincity took place under the then campus principal, 6. focus on areas where the local situation had a Professor Clement Sankat. This involved some private strategic advantage farmers and some investment from the Government of the Republic of China. Since the reformation of the 7. encourage the candidates to publish papers by Faculty of Food and Agriculture there have been three doing the theses by manuscripts and referred deans, Professor Carlisle Pemberton (2012 to 2014), publications 16 Conference Proceedings

Dr Isaac Bekele (2014-2017), Professor Wayne Ganpat 5. Ag 50 Conference (Emeritus Professor (2017-2021) and Dr Mark Wuddivira (2021 to present) Lawrence A. Wilson) (Anon 1999a, Anon . This new field station is now overgrown. 1999b, Anon 1999c) The major contributions of the Faculty of Agriculture/ 6. Professor L. A Wilson lobbied for the Faculty Science and Agriculture/Faculty of Food and establishing of an FAO centre within the Agriculture, The University of the West Indies to agri- Caribbean, as the previous centre for the culture in the Caribbean and the world during Phase III Caribbean was in Santiago, Chile. The new sub-regional headquarters was established in In the best interest of time and space these achievements Barbados. will now be listed. Most of the agriculture academic staff within the Faculty of Food and Agriculture 7. The joint meeting of the Caribbean were now graduates of the Faculty of Agriculture Agricultural Economics Society (CAES), the during Phases II and III. Since the demerger of the Caribbean Food Crops Society (CFCS) and faculties in 2012 there have been four deans. Three the International Society for Horticulture were graduates of the faculty in all its transformations Science (ISHS) in 2013 brought to the table (Professor Carlisle Pemberton, Professor Wayne all the work being done (Anon, 2013). Ganpat and Dr Mark Wuddivira). There have been several deputy deans, lecturers, senior lecturers, 8. Water management training for the professors and emeritus professors who were graduates Caribbean (Dr Gaius Eudoxie and Dr Ronald of the faculty. Three emeritus professors were also Roopnarine) graduates of ICTA, Holman E Williams, Nazir Ahmad and John Spence. From1921 (the beginning of Phase I) https://www.caribbeanwaternet.com/gallery until 1970 (during Phase II) this would not have been https://www.facebook.com/CaribbeanWaterNet/ possible. 9. The hosting of the XI Symposium on 1. During the latter part of Phase III, one began Amazonian and Wildlife Conservation to see agricultural graduates developing (XICIMFAUNA 2014) which was held for the private sector initiatives in agriculture and first time outside of South America (Professor for the first time the children of agriculture Gary Wayne Garcia) https://comfauna.org/ graduates entering the faculty to pursue congresos/memorias-y-resumenes/2014- agriculture degrees and to go back into the trinidad-y-tobago/ family private sector businesses. 10. Regional plant protection workshops have 2. The first tissue culture of carambola, also been held annually (Deans Office and USDA known as star fruit or five fingers, the fruit of funded). Averrhoa carambola was done by Michael C. Joseph, the trees still are alive and have been 11. The establishment of a breadfruit germplasm bearing fruit year-round opposite the Sir Frank at the University Field Station and the First Stockdale Building since 1996 (Joseph 1996). International Conference on Breadfruit in the Caribbean (Professor Laura Roberts) 3. The Continuing Education Programme in Volume 93 Special Issue 1 International Agricultural Technology (CEPAT) was the Breadfruit Conference. This brought about 20 first distance education programme within - 21 varieties into Trinidad and Tobago and all three campuses of UWI. This included the emphasised utilisation, George (2015), Joseph M.Sc in Agricultural Development and also (2015). the Certificate in Agriculture which allowed persons to matriculate into agriculture from 12. The developing of The Open School of areas that did not have science (particularly Tropical Animal Science and Production and chemistry) in the secondary schools. the website for the teaching of all the livestock disciplines, http://ostasp.brinkster.net/ 4. TA 2000 (Emeritus Professor Lawrence A. 17 Wilson) (Anon 1997). Conference Proceedings

13. The development of the Crop Commodity 18. The concept of Carnival Ecology (carnival, Utilisation Laboratory (Emeritus Professor food and the environment) was developed Lawrence A. Wilson and Dr Lynda Wickham) by Professor Gary Garcia and is an important component within the M.Sc. in Cultural Studies 14. Work on sugarcane as animal feed since at the University of Trinidad and Tobago. 1976 resulted in the publication by Archiméde and Garcia (2010). 19. It was highlighted from Phase II that an important output was the bringing to the 15. In 1995 IDB Staff Development and Training attention of the Caribbean the potential of funded a study and travel tour of NorthAmerican tropical hair sheep. During the early 1970s zoos for Dr Gary Wayne Garcia and the focus these animals were reported to have a growth was on neotropical animals. Out of this was rate of between 60 - 100 g/day (Devendra, developed a very popular undergraduate and post 1975). Work at the SFC, the Department of graduate elective (Tropical Zoo and Wildlife Livestock Science and the Department of Food Production and Management) that contributed Production demonstrated that Tropical Hair to the development of the Open School of Sheep could perform very well (170 to 300 Tropical Animal Science and Production g/day) as long as they receive proper nutrition and the conceptualising, development and and management (Wildeus (1991). Keith international collaboration on intensive George at the Tobago House of Assembly production models for neotropical non- has demonstrated that tropical hair sheep domestic animals that has generated about can perform as well as temperate wool sheep 80 publications and books. Working with zoos attaining 45 kg live weight at 120 days under for the developing of intensive non-domestic good management and nutrition (George et neotropical animal production systems was al. 2013); this is equivalent to a growth rate parallel to the approach taken by Professor of 333 g/day. Work done with tropical hair Purseglove (who worked with botanic gardens) sheep at St Augustine in collaboration with for the development of the knowledge of other institutions over 44 years has illustrated tropical crop production systems (Purseglove, that tropical hair sheep could grow as well 1959). as temperate wool sheep. There is now an intensive sheep production private business 16. Research into and production models for in Trinidad with over 6,000 sheep and goats neotropical non-domestic animals intensively zero grazed. a. Agouti (Dasyprocta leporina) (Brown- Uddenberg et al. 2004), 20. Useful postgraduate programmes: MScs b. Manicou (Didelphis marsurpalis in Tropical Commodity Utilisation, Tropical insularis) Animal Science and Production, Food Safety, c. Collared peccary (Tayassu tajacu) Plant Protection, Human Nutrition and Human (Garcia et al. 2005), Ecology, Agricultural Economics; MPhils d. Red brocket deer (Mazama americana) in Crop Science, Agricultural Economics, e. Green iguana (Iguana iguana). Livestock Science, Soil Science; PhDs in Crop Science, Soil Science, Livestock 17. The Open School of Tropical Animal Science, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science and Production has worked closely Extension, Human Nutrition and Human with the Centre for Latin America and the Ecology. Caribbean (CENLAC) in the expanding of the collaboration with Latin America 21. The Farmer Field School (FFS) was universities. introduced as an extension training and teaching methodology in the Caribbean by Dr David Dolly (Dolly, 2008). 18 Conference Proceedings

22. Conference on Climate Change and the Why are Trinidad and Tobago and the other En- Impact on Food and Nutrition Security glish speaking Caribbean (ESC) Countries net im- (Anon 2018) porters of food? 23. The academic staff produced textbooks and The contributions that ICTA-UCWI-UWI agriculture manuals that are of relevance to Caribbean made in the areas of economics, agricultural agriculture arising out of the work done economics, geography, soil science, food and export during Phases II and III. Brown-Uddenberg, crops production, carnival and culture, livestock et al. (2004), Garcia et al. (2005), Eudoxie, production (modern day domestic - old world animals, (2010), Archiméde and Garcia (2010), Ahamad neo-tropical domestic and non-domestic), veterinary (2011), Ganpat (2013), Ganpat (2014), Garcia training and regional agricultural administration et al. (2014), Ganpat and Isaac (2015), Ganpat have been highlighted. The Seismic Research Unit at and Isaac (2016). St Augustine was first established out of the ICTA- UCWI. Today, in 2021, the ESC countries are net 24. The Future Vision Simulation Methodology importers of food, in the order of about US$6 billion (developed by Nick Marsh and Ian Ivey for per annum (CARICOM Secretariat statistics). This is a New Zealand) was developed into a teaching very disturbing situation. The above question needs to methodology for use in the teaching of the be addressed but is outside of the scope of this paper livestock disciplines by Professor Gary Garcia. and it is being suggested that it should be addressed by other scholars. However, a practical way forward Social Contributions of the Faculty of Agriculture, for CARICOM Agriculture and for the Faculty of Food UWI to the Caribbean during 1991 to 2021 and Agriculture will be suggested in a follow up paper. 1. The development of the first distance education Some closing discussion points programme within the UWI System (see above). This was done through (CEPAT) that was abandoned after The success in the future will require that UWI the merger of the faculties in 1996. Faculty of Food and Agriculture MUST look outward and not inward. Five important “operational 2. Graduates of the Faculty of Agriculture have networks” are now being suggested as follows: continued to be put into leadership positions in agriculture, government, private sector companies and 1. Private sector working networks involved memberships of the boards of national, international in food importation, agricultural input supply, and CARICOM institutions, including UWI and food processing and distribution and in the CARDI. The recently appointed Executive Director of food and beverage industry must be developed. CARDI, Ansari Hosein B.Sc. Gen Agric (First Class It was earlier pointed out that ICTA was Hons); M.Sc. Tropical Animal Science and Production developed out of a private sector initiative in (Distinction), is a graduate of the Faculty. Trinidad and Tobago, this model worked so we need not reinvent the wheel. 3. The achievements of the individual members of the graduating classes from 1978 onwards should be noted, 2. Working networks with institutions of higher but this would have to be the subject of a future case education and ministries of agriculture in study for a proposed book. Emeritus Professor Richard the CARICOM countries, particularly those A. I. Brathwaite has always highlighted the graduating involved in science, technology and agriculture class of 1978. must be seen as being central to the operations of the Faculty of Food and Agriculture. 4. The case of one of the youngest graduates of ICTA with the DICTA in 1961, Dr Samuel B. Howard (who 3. Working networks with the science and is now 82 years of age), along with any other living agriculture research and development graduates of ICTA (including Dr Patrick Alleyne, now institutions and universities of LatinAmerica in his 90s) will be specially highlighted in the book (where there are the oldest and most developed that will follow up on this paper. institutions of higher education in the Western Hemisphere) must be actively pursued and Conference Proceedings 19

where necessary joint degrees, diplomas and research conducted; 100 years later it seems certificates should be offered. Implicit in this that the financing of agricultural education is that the academics within the faculty must and research at St Augustine is again on the become polylingual (Spanish, Portuguese and shoulders of the citizens of Trinidad and French). Tobago. 4. The Faculty of Food and Agriculture needs 4. In 1921 ICTAbegan with the focus on plantation to work closer with the Departments of export crops and with no livestock or animal Chemical and Mechanical Engineering science staff. The first animal science scientist within UWI to commercialise the useful was appointed in the late 1940s. In the early initiatives for agriculture over the last 60 years 1960s a Department of Livestock Science was since the formation of the UWI campus at St established within UCWI-UWI. Through the Augustine. leadership of this department was established the UWI-Mc Gill Sugarcane Feeds Centre in 5. UWI Faculty of Food and Agriculture- 1976 and the School of Veterinary Medicine University of Trinidad and Tobago in 1989. The Sugarcane Feeds Centre is now Agriculture: this collaboration needs to be under the Ministry of Agriculture, Land and initiated. Fisheries of Trinidad and Tobago and the SFC has no linkage with the Faculty of Food and One must understand and analyse the past to be able to Agriculture. In 2021 the Faculty only has one make informed decisions for the future. In this regard full time livestock academic staff member. it is suggested that case studies be undertaken of the However, livestock, livestock products following activities which are mentioned above: and animal feed make up about 50% of the CARICOM region’s food import bill. It would 1. The UWI-Mc Gill Sugarcane Feeds Centre/ appear that the non-livestock focus of the FFA SFC today is no different to the non-livestock focus of ICTA during the first phase of the teaching 2. The English Speaking Caribbean UWI- and research of agriculture at St Augustine. University of Wisconsin Agricultural Extension Outreach collaboration 3. The Blenheim Sheep Project in Tobago. Recommendations Conclusions There is the immediate need for the restructuring of 1. There were no institutions of higher education the Faculty of Food and Agriculture in the light of the in the English speaking Caribbean 100 years present world food crisis. This narrative has shown that ago; they lagged behind the Spanish and French ICTA-UCWI-UWI agriculture teaching and research speaking Caribbean by hundreds of years. has gone through three phases. The first two phases were driven by the United Kingdom in response to 2. ICTA at St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, their need for agricultural raw materials to drive their laid the foundation for teaching and research industries. These were not driven by food security/ in science and technology for the ESC through food sovereignty/self-sufficiency in food and nutrition the formation of the Departments of Soil and needs for the CARICOM communities. In the third Chemistry, Plant Science and Botany and the phase was observed a shift from serving the needs of establishment of sugarcane manufacturing the UK and the British Commonwealth countries to technology. This was further built upon through serving the needs of the newly independent Caribbean the evolution of ICTA into UCWI and UWI. economies. This immediate future phase has begun with the need for our economies to cope with the 3. ICTA began with the private sector plantation global and local consequences of the COVID19 owners from Trinidad and Tobago investing pandemic, the war between Ukraine and Russia and in their future (a private sector initiative). global warming. These consequences require improved The United Kingdom made the operational initiatives in health and nutrition, food production, investments and the UK and its colonies water management (drainage, irrigation and potable worldwide benefited from the training and 20 Conference Proceedings

water supplies), sustainable energy utilisation, the 6. Emphasis must be placed on integrating the minimisation of food production waste and efficient earlier suggested networks into a new teaching marketing food marketing systems. Additionally, and research agenda and methodology. Most the science between the chemistry and utilisation of of the first three phases of ICTA-UCWI-UWI natural products for human health must be urgently teaching and research in agriculture did not addressed. The author’s recommendations for the have the internet and associated technical immediate future phase for the teaching and research and scientific components at its core for its in agriculture at St Augustine follow. teaching methodology and delivery. This must also include “future vision simulation” 1. The Faculty Board should have an advisory methodologies. committee chaired by someone from the private sector. Because of the multifunctionality of In closing it should be indicated that over the last agriculture this board should have representation 100 years the Faculty of Food and Agriculture in all from the various stakeholders: Agricultural its transformations has acquired “hidden resources”. Society of Trinidad and Tobago, food crop These hidden resources include the land, the graduates, farmer associations, livestock famers (broiler the accomplishments, the unique courses developed chicken. eggs, duck, small ruminants, dairy and the “brand.” Creative and resourceful ways must and beef and other livestock), horticulturists be found to put these hidden resources to use and to etc. The Dean of the Faculty should be the add value to the institution to enhance its viability for Secretary of the Advisory Committee and report its stakeholders. the transactions of the Advisory Committee to the Faculty Board. Acknowledgements Special thanks must be extended to the librarians of 2. There should be the reconstitution of the Alma Jordan Library at St Augustine, in particular the departments into (i) Food Crops and Sheeba Sreenivasan and Joy Smith. There is a world Horticulture, (ii) Agricultural Extension class library at St Augustine, that is 100 years old, built and Communication, (iii) Agri-Business, on agriculture, and therein are world class librarians. I Economics and Entrepreneurship, (iv) must also thank my Ph.D. graduates Dr Kegan Jones Animal/Livestock Science, Human Nutrition and Dr Laura Tardieu for their critical contributions. and Human Ecology and (v) Department of The comments given to me by Dr Francis Davis, who Geography and the Environment. was a B.Sc. General Agriculture graduate about 50 years ago, in developing this paper must also be noted. 3. There should be a formal organic relationship Finally, I must thank Jalaladin Khan for pointing out with CARDI and this could be linked to to me the scientific role that the Trinidad and Tobago the reformed Departments of Agricultural Field Naturalist Club has played through its interaction Economics and Agricultural Extension. with ICTA-UCWI-UWI over the last 100 years. 4. In the last 100 years ICTA-UCWI-UWI land References/literature consulted resources have decreased from about 450 acres spread over four locations to less than 300 acres Ahmad, N. 2011. Soils of the Caribbean. Ian Randle and attention now has to be paid to the efficient Publishers, 394 pages use of the existing land resource of which less than 100 acres are currently under proper use. Ahmad, N. 1984. Tropical Clay Soils, their use and management, Outlook on Agriculture, Volume 5. The Herbarium, the “unofficial botanic garden 13, No 2:87-95 of St Augustine and its surroundings,” the Department of Chemistry, the pharmacy Anon. 1965 to 1980. Farmers’ Diary, The Harland programme, the new suggested Department of Society, Faculty of Agriculture, The University Crop and Horticulture, and the private sector of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and should be integrated into a working network on Tobago. Natural Products. Anon. 1968. Proceedings of the Caribbean Food Crops Society, Sixth Annual Meeting, St Augustine, Trinidad, July 7-13th, 1968, Volume VI, 160 pages Conference Proceedings 21

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Ganpat, W. G. and W. P. Isaac. (Editors) 2016. the Hummingbird (Phaethornis guy) and the Environmental sustainability and climate Pawi (Pipile pipile) Wildlife Farmers’ and change adaptation strategies. IGI Global, Producers’ Booklet #3, Electronic Version pdf 406pp File launched at the XICIMFAUNA Conference August 21st, UTT, The Open Tropical Forage- Garcia, G. W., H. E. Williams, S. Jeans, C. Baksh, and Animal Production Laboratory (OTF-APL), R. Best. 1993. “The performance of two small Department of Food Production, Faculty of herds of Jamaica Hope Dairy Cattle imported Science and Agriculture, UWI, St Augustine. into Trinidad”. GWG Publications, 24 Sagan Drive, Champs Fleurs, Trinidad and Tobago. In Dairy Development in the Caribbean Region. 397 pages, https://uwispace.sta.uwi.edu/ CARDI, IDF and CTA; Editor, Don Walmsley, dspace/handle/2139/49360 pp. 73-84. Garcia, G. W. (Unpublished, Circulated within the Faculty) circa 2012. “Future Vision and Garcia, G. W. and K. A. E. Archibald. 2001. “The Innovative Pillars for “Agricultural Extension” Philosophy of the Open School of Tropical and “Agricultural Policy” in support of Food Animal Science and Production”, Caribbean Security and Farmers’ Wealth in CARICOM Food Crops Society, Thirty Seventh Annual with implications for the African, Caribbean Meeting, Trinidad and Tobago, Vol XXXVII and Pacific (ACP) States: 2012 to 2033” :20-27 Garcia, G. W. 2018-2019a (Unpublished). “The “Multifunctionality of Agriculture” for the Garcia, G. W., Gail G. Young, Kirk M. Amour, Caribbean (CARICOM/Cariforum) Countries Desmond James, Cicero H.O. Lallo, William and Small Island States Part I: Development of Mollineau, Anil Roopchand, Michelle Spencer, the Rationale and Objectives,” Course Notes Marvin A. Prosper, Nirmala Ganessingh, for AGLS 6001 Tropical Animal Science, Raajesh Rooplal, Nadra Gayan, Arnaud Steil, Facebook Group AGLS 6001 Tropical Animal Alain Xande, Anouk Bemelmans, Sergio Science Gamma Norgueira Filho, Diva Guimaraes, Hugo Gálvez and Pedro Mayor Aparicio. Garcia, G. W. 2018-2019b (Unpublished). “The 2005. The Collared Peccary/ Pakira/ Javelina/ “Multifunctionality of Agriculture” for the Catto/ Catete/ Porco de Monte/ Taitetu/ Sajino/ Caribbean (CARICOM/Cariforum) Countries Quenk (Pecari tajacu, Tayassu tajacu) Booklet and Small Island States Part II: An Analysis of & Producers’ Manual, Wildlife Farmers’ and the Multifunctionality Concept,” Course Notes Producers’ Booklet #2, The Open Tropical for AGLS 6001 Tropical Animal Science, Forage-Animal Production Laboratory (OTF- Facebook Group AGLS 6001 Tropical Animal APL), Department of Food Production, Faculty Science of Science and Agriculture, UWI, St Augustine. GWG Publications, 24 Sagan Drive, Champs Garcia, G. W. 2018-2019c (Unpublished). “The Fleurs, Trinidad and Tobago, 238 pages “Multifunctionality of Agriculture” for the Caribbean (CARICOM/Cariforum) Countries Garcia, G. W., Anil Roopchand, Jalaludin Khan, and Small Island States, Part III: The Way Romano A. Mac farlane, Kirk Armour, Derams Forward for Caribbean Agriculture using the Humour Carnavon, William Martin Mollineau, Multifunctionality Considerations,” Course Andrew Oche Adogwa, Julia Ribeiro, Tracy Notes for AGLS 6001 Tropical Animal Science, Jonkman, Maimoona Bowcock, Wilhemina Facebook Group AGLS 6001 Tropical Animal Kissoonsingh, Michele D. Singh, Janelle Science Daniel, Cicero H. O. Lallo, Claudelle Lewis, Wendy Sawh, Terry Sampson, Laura Tardieu, George, K., R. Job, and G. W. Garcia. 2013. “An Cyrielle Casimire, Kamla Bahadoor, Kenneth assessment of the non-genetic factors that affect Roach, Nadra Nathi-Gyan, Dave Samayah, small ruminant production in the Tropics: The Kenneth Fournellier, Saira Kalicharan, Ronald Blenheim sheep project.” In CAES/CFCS/ Leed, Richard Joseph, Aurea Linhares, Igor ISHS CONFERENCE 2013: AGRIBUSINESS Seligmann and Peter Feinsinger. 2014. The ESSENTIAL FOR FOOD SECURITY- National Birds and an Endangered Bird of Trinidad and Tobago: The Cocrico (Ortalis ruficauda), the Scarlet Ibis (Eudocimus ruber), 24 Conference Proceedings

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A virtual transplant: moving plant clinics from face to face to online – the Extension Training and Information Services Division of Trinidad and Tobago experience Roshni Sita Ramsingh Agricultural Entomologist (Ag) Extension Training and Information Services Division Ministry of Agriculture Land and Fisheries Trinidad and Tobago. National Data Manager Plantwise Online Management System (POMS) Plant clinics are an initiative of the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI) in an effort to make plant health advice available to all farmers, no matter how remotely located. In 2009, CABI trained members of staff of Ministry of Agriculture in Trinidad and Tobago as plant doctors and the first plant clinics were started in 2011. In response to the public health regulations put in place to combat the global pandemic, plant clinics were moved from face to face to online in August 2020. In 1 year, August 2020 to July 2021, virtual plant clinics addressed 545 queries and reached 104,122 persons, while face to face clinics, from January 2019 to December 2019, addressed 30 queries and reached 30 persons; while there is no limit on the number of queries per individual, most participants at the face to face clinics confined themselves to one. Virtual plant clinics can reach a larger audience, can share plant health information more widely, can disseminate information on topical issues more rapidly and are more convenient for both the clients and the plant doctors. Introduction/background Centre in Centeno on the last Wednesday of every The Plantwise Programme is an initiative of the month and managed by the plant doctors of the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International Extension Training and Information Services Division (CABI) with the aim to make plant health advice more (ETISD) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and accessible to all farmers, especially those in remote Fisheries (MALF). The plant doctors and the clients areas. Front-line agricultural workers are trained as seeking advice would all gather in one room, and be plant doctors to run a series of plant clinics scheduled dealt with on a first come first served basis. For the for a set day, time and venue. The plant clinics were nine-year period that face-to-face clinics were active, meant to follow the templates of the human health 1,738 queries were diagnosed and prescriptions given. clinics and to offer the same kind of service, only for Problem Statement plants; not people. Due to the public health restrictions imposed in Trinidad In Trinidad and Tobago, the first cohort of 22 plant and Tobago as a result of the Global Pandemic, having doctors were trained in 2009 by CABI; the training face-to-face clinics were impossible, so an alternative focused on diagnosing pest and disease problems, had to be found that was keeping in line with all the selecting management options to match the diagnoses existing health restrictions, limited resources and a and the logistics in setting up, advertising and running technologically naïve staff. plant clinics. The first face-to-face plant clinics were Methodology started in 2011 and continued until February 2020. Initially there were eight plant clinics throughout In August 2020 as a reaction to the stringent public Trinidad, one in each county, this gradually dwindled health regulation mandated by the Government in until, from 2017 to 2020, the sole plant clinic in response to the global pandemic, a virtual plant clinic operation was the one held at the Farmers Training 27 Conference Proceedings 27

was offered on the Facebook page of the ETISD. The page. Once the scenes, source, video stream key title plant clinics were set for noon on Wednesday; initially and description were all in place, then the ‘GO LIVE’ there were clinics every week but at the start of 2021 this tab would activate on Facebook and once clicked the was changed to a clinic every other week. The clinics live stream would begin. The free OBS was more than were advertised at least 2 days in advance and all were sufficient for our needs, so no petition has been made invited to send in photos of any problem they were to upgrade to a more sophisticated version. having with their plants. The photos were examined and when needed, further information relevant to growing Initially staff of the Information Technology Division conditions and treatment, was sought. The diagnoses of the Ministry of Agriculture would set up the entire and recommendations were presented during a live live feed; plant doctors would just sit in front of the feed using the free Open Broadcast Software (OBS) computer and speak when told to by the IT personnel. on the page. Questions asked during the presentations However, as time went by plant doctors gradually learnt were answered in real time as far as possible. how to manipulate the OBS, primarily by observing the IT staff. At first it was very small things, how to The answers and recommendations to the questions turn the camera and the volume on and off and then posted were prepared in Microsoft Power Point; another how to switch from scene to scene. software such as Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel could have been used, however the plant doctors were Eventually some staff members learnt how to set up the most accustomed to using Power Point in their face-to- OBS and how to connect it to the Facebook page. The face training so they remained with the software with entire process was actually a Farmer’s Field School in which they were most comfortable. action with the plant doctors learning by doing, and making mistakes, under the watchful eyes of the IT Very quickly it was realised that the live feed presented staff. Within 6 months the feed was set up without any a golden opportunity to address topical issues pertinent intervention from the IT staff and within 9 months when to the sector. So, other presentations were added to the second lock down of the public service began, the the live feed in order to enhance the sessions. Topics plant doctors were able to run the virtual plant clinics discussed were known issues in the sector or problems from their homes. A triumph indeed! highlighted by the main stream media, and sometimes even gleaned from the photos posted and questions From September 2020 to August 2021 29 virtual asked. clinics were held, 104 122 persons were reached and five hundred, 545 queries were answered and There was one particular session where boron deficiency recommendations given. Since virtual clinics have only was diagnosed for three different clients. Realising that been available since August 2020, only one 12-month boron seemed to be a misunderstood micro-nutrient a period (August 2020- July 2021) was assessed. This short presentation on boron was shared during the live was compared with one 12-month period of face to feed. Spiraling out of that, during the next four plant face plant clinics, January 2019-December 2019. clinic sessions micro-nutrients and their importance in plant growth were highlighted. Basically the problems Data used in this assessment came from two sources: observed from the photos posted served as a very information on the attendance, diagnoses and informal needs assessment of the sector. prescriptions at face-to-face clinics is kept in the Plantwise Online Management System Database The process of setting up the OBS was very different (POMS); this database was accessed to gather from any other kind of technology that the plant information on face to face clinics. doctors were familiar with. The OBS is divided into scenes and source and all supporting materials, e.g Data on the ‘attendance” at the virtual plant clinics came power points, images and videos, have to be open on from the Facebook page: ETIS Division @Facebook. the device in order for the platform to access them. The Technical information on symptoms, diagnoses and scenes are linked to the sources, which all have to be suggested treatments was kept by the plant doctors at set up and aligned prior to the start of the feed which ETISD. is streamed by linking the OBS to the Facebook page using a stream key. It was very interesting to realise that Discussion the stream key would not activate unless a title and a description of the feed was inputted onto the Facebook Plant clinics provide a genuine service to members of the public in diagnosing and prescribing treatments 28 Conference Proceedings

for plant health problems. In the absence of impartial The wider audience provides an opportunity for sharing plant focused advice, people turn to the input suppliers valuable information to the clients with an immediacy whose primary focus is sales and not plant health, not possible with the in person clinics. Presentations environmental health or financial returns for the farmer. on different topics such as ‘use of personal protective equipment’ and ‘the role of plant nutrients in plant From January 2017 to February 2020 in person plant health’ were included in each session. From August clinics were held on the last Wednesday of each month 2020 to July 2021 22 special topics were handled. The from 9:00 am. to 12:00 noon at the Farmer’s Training plant clinics were also an excellent vehicle to sensitise Centre in Centeno, Trinidad. Anyone wanting to the public to the giant African snail (GAS) and indeed access the service had to make the journey during the any other pest of significance that requires an island- specified time in order to meet with the staff. The five wide response. members of staff, four Agricultural Officers I, and one Agricultural Entomologist would devote this day to However, there are challenges; the most significant plant clinic and not schedule any other activities. drawback of the virtual plant clinic is an unintended technological bias, only those participants with The virtual plant clinics are easier to access than the internet access, devices and sufficient familiarity with face-to-face clinics since there is no requirement for Facebook to log on to the live feed, could participate in travelling and therefore no corresponding loss of time the clinics. This means that some farmers are not being or working hours; in fact, they are scheduled for noon reached, it is probable that the older, poorer and less so persons can log on during their lunch hour. Questions educated farmers who are being left out, the very cadre can be asked at any time on the Facebook page and plant clinics were designed to assist, but as yet we have are answered during the live feed so the stringent time insufficient data to support or refute this theory. constraints of the face to face clinics being the only time when questions can be posed are considerably Another serious deficiency of the virtual clinic is relaxed during the virtual clinics. If a virtual diagnosis the truncated collection of biometric data from the cannot be made, then a visit is scheduled to observe participants. While we are able to gather information the symptoms in person. The appeal of the virtual on plant health problems, disaggregation of data based plant clinic is reflected in its clients, in one 12-month on age, gender, educational level, location etc., cannot period the virtual clinic answered 545 queries, where be done, making it impossible to identify trends or as in comparison the face to face clinics answered 30 demographics that need more focus. This means we queries from January 2019 to December 2019. are constantly problem solving in a vacuum and until we can concoct a feasible way of collecting biometrics Figure 1: Queries handled at plant clinics in 2019, any prophylactic measures to address plant health face-to-face clinics, and in 2020, virtual clinics problems remains out of our reach. The lack of supporting data also means we are never quite sure how many of our core clients, the commercial farmer, are actually accessing the virtual plant clinics. An unforeseen complication has been the emergence of copycats; a former participant who has now launched another ‘Plant Clinic’ on Facebook. While ETISD owns no patent for ‘plant clinics’ the prospect of private individuals running plant clinics for their own aggrandisement is one we view with great trepidation. The questions are answered in an open forum that The MALF in Trinidad and Tobago has Extension everyone views; this expands the learning as viewers Officers who routinely visit registered farmers across learn how to manage everyone else’s problems as well the islands, however they do not service the householder as their own. The sessions remain on the platform and or hobbyist. This can be a serious omission especially can be viewed at any time. when there is a severe pest or disease outbreak. The virtual plant clinic provides support and information to Conference Proceedings 29

these individuals as well as to the commercial producer. since we are unintentionally only sampling those who find value in the service. Those who see no merit in the For the period under discussion no impact assessment virtual plant clinics do not log on and are therefore not has as yet been conducted, however, the comments sampled. This is a serious drawback that we will have submitted by the viewers are used as a gauge of how to overcome if we want a meaningful reflection of the the service is being received. These are some of the appeal of the service. comments posted on the session over the 12 month period: Conclusion 28th October 2020 Jo Ann Khalawan. “Thank you. The virtual plant clinics have been a successful Always very informative” replacement for the in person plant clinic due to their wider reach, greater opportunities for learning and 28th October 2020 Keisha Alexander. “Love this flexibility in terms of time and location. However, they session keep up the great work will join again next are not without drawbacks, important segments of the week.” farming population including the most disadvantaged who should garner the most benefit from the service, 17th February 2021 Jason Mohommed “Extremely are being left out. In addition, a mechanism needs informative! Really appreciated this session!” to be developed to collect information on the clients in order to build a comprehensive plant health care 3rd March 2021 Petal Waldron. “Thanks a lot...this management system. was great” These trying times have been a veritable watershed 23rd June 2021 Maison Beausejour. “Thank you. of innovation and reinvention, and things cannot and, Very good info” should not, revert to pre-pandemic states. When public health restrictions are eased the virtual clinic should To date we have received many positive comments and remain and a hybrid of services, virtual and face-to- very few negative comments about the virtual plant face need to be implemented to ensure all sectors are clinics, and this is one of the criteria that is used to provided with the most ideal plant health care services. gauge the success of the venture. We are well aware that our sample audience to gauge success is skewed 30 Conference Proceedings

Artificial intelligence in the agriculture sector of small island developing states in the Caribbean Roganci Fontelera1, Fazeeia Mohammed1, Jade Chattergoon1, Omar Mohammed2, Patrick Hosein1 1TTLab 2Cropper Foundation Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Small island developing states (SIDS) have unique agricultural challenges, such as poor drainage, water constraints, restricted land area and ecosystems under environmental pressures. The application of artificial intelligence (AI) in agriculture has evolved into precision farming and predictive model analysis, which provide farmers with tools to manage their available resources. This results in a reduction in production cost, higher yield, healthier crops, improved data collection and informed decision-making. AI is also employed in analysing crop health through the use of drones/unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), satellites and remote sensors to provide farmers with detailed analytical data on water-stress, pests, bacteria and weeds. Additionally, AI companies are investing in agricultural robotics to maintain farms with little human input. The use of modern day AI to solve traditional farming problems has streamlined agricultural related tasks. The application of these techniques is limited to large multinational organisations since the application is expensive and data dependent. This study also looks at the ethical considerations that should be made to ensure the seamless uptake of AI within the sector. Overall, the information collected can be used to determine the viability of applying AI solutions to agriculture problems within SIDS. Keywords: Artificial intelligence, agriculture sector, Caribbean, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), drone, small island developing states (SIDS), small scale farming Introduction Although the adoption of data-driven technologies in the agricultural sector of SIDS has been tardy, it should Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and be noted that there have been indications of progress in digitalisation are relatively new in the Caribbean the recent past (IntechOpen 2019). Oxford Insights has region, and by extension, Small Island Developing also indicated that AI can play a key role in addressing States (SIDS). The AI Readiness index ranks 160 various problems across the region in sectors such as nations around the world on their state of preparedness education, health, finance and agriculture. to integrate and apply AI into their public services. This annual score is accompanied by a detailed report One of the leading applications ofAI technologies in the which describes each nation’s state of government, agriculture sector is known as “precision agriculture”. technology sector, data, and infrastructure with respect Precision agriculture involves the use of remote sensing to AI Readiness. In the AI Readiness Index report for technologies and other AI-powered applications 2020, the majority of Caribbean countries ranked in and tools to efficiently and optimally use resources, the lower half, with an overall regional index of 41.26 boost harvest quality, increase yields, and provide as the third lowest globally (Oxford Insights 2020). powerful insights into the state of crops and livestock Experts at Oxford Insights have reported that the (International Society of Precision Agriculture 2022). region faces shortcomings in areas of both capacity AI ultimately reduces the need for labour intensive and investment. fieldwork while increasing the profit margin, thus Conference Proceedings 31

improving farmers quality of life and boosting the performance and consume few resources. The lack of economy in the process. With a sufficiently wide range investment towards the advancement of technology in of AI systems in place, there is endless potential for the region also affects the direction of career paths in the business aspect of the farming ecosystem. There Caribbean youth. are applications in institutional and monetary risk assessment, supply management, logistics, marketing, Methodology transportation, food safety and food security to name a few. This can lead to an increased number of jobs and This paper examines the viability of applying AI additional streams of revenue for local farmers which techniques through an analysis of publications both will subsequently allow them to increase the scale of internationally and locally with specific emphasis their farms and grow their businesses. on the AI readiness of the agriculture sector within Trinidad and Tobago. It highlights the challenges Farmers are becoming increasingly aware of these within the sector for the growth of AI technologies and benefits and are exploring the use of these technologies its current issues. An examination of the impact that in their daily work regimes. AI would have on the SIDS, along with an analysis of regional metrics is addressed. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones for data collection, pest and weed control and security The benefits and application for AI in SIDS will be surveillance is also becoming more common (Yinka- examined from the following points of view: Banjo and Ajayi 2019). With the adoption of new technology in agriculture, younger persons are entering ● Research and development the sector with increased educational backgrounds and new ambitions to revolutionise the agricultural ● The application of AI technologies landscape in SIDS. This can ultimately boost levels of food security, exportation revenues, improve the ● The use of AI in smart information systems economy and assist SIDS in achieving their sustainable development goals. Statistical data collected from the Oxford AI Readiness Index Report will be restated and contextualised by The first necessity for any implementation of AI is the research done in Caribbean SIDS. availability of massive volumes of data. Many of the current systems in education, health and government Discussion still heavily rely on paperwork and physical forms. Unfortunately, the agriculture sector is even further Although SIDS are commonly small in size, farmers behind in this regard. Many of the farmers in Trinidad face challenges due to remote market locations and Tobago can be classified as small-holder farmers. (Herbert 2019). This means that the volume of arable These farmers operate on a small size of land and are land is limited, and the remoteness of markets leads usually aided by members of their family to earn a to higher trading and production costs. As a result, living. They do not possess advanced farming tools new investments into production are limited and thus or machinery and thus are reliant on manual labour. ultimately the competitive scope of the market is Their techniques remain relatively simple and outdated reduced. as most of these farmers do not possess a high- level educational background (Ragbir et al. 2014). High population growth rates create a necessity Predictably, there is no large reservoir of farm data for practising more efficient agriculture practices. readily available for the development of AI models. However, SIDS suffer from limited land space, Additionally, there is no physical data infrastructure climate vulnerabilities and human development lags. put in place with the capacity to store the amounts of In addition to this, soil quality and groundwater data required for cutting edge precision agriculture. availability are both decreasing. Thus, there is a new Large scale AI systems require an expensive and sense of urgency to increase agricultural production in robust set of data infrastructure such as cloud enabled a sustainable and responsible manner. data platforms, domain-based architecture, data vaults, application progamming interfaces (APIs) and The application of AI in Agriculture more which are capable of efficient and high-speed AI is a versatile tool; capable of both increasing productivity and minimising losses through its ability to use mathematical modelling to create predictions and perform complex analyses on vast amounts of 32 Conference Proceedings

data. Currently, AI is applied to the agriculture sector them efficient and cost effective in protecting both in the following ways: crops and animals against diseases and pests. Image data collected from UAVs can be processed in different ● Disease and pest identification ways that can facilitate water-stress monitoring, weed ● Crop and soil monitoring detection, disease and pest identification through ● Agriculture robots image labelling. ● Crop yield predictions ● Intelligent spraying and maintenance Expense and revenue tracking can attest to the ● Predictive insights effectiveness of a new practice or chemical. This can ● Supply and demand chain optimisation lead to the development of more cost-effective farming techniques. Satellite and node sensor data also serve as There are a wide variety of data collection methods data sources for application into AI algorithms in the used in the field of AI for agricultural purposes. For field of agriculture. Cloud computing is commonly used example, UAVs have become a cost efficient way of for purposes of external storage for the vast quantity of collecting data on crop acreages. UAVs are outfitted data points collected on farms through UAVs, satellites with custom sensors, cameras and filters which make and sensors. Table 1 shows a SWOT analysis which considers the multitude of factors involved in the application of AI in the agriculture sector of SIDS. Table 1. SWOT analysis of AI applications to agriculture within SIDS Strengths Weaknesses ● Improvement of crop yield using satellite and drone ● Insufficient temporal data from multiple sources are images stored ● A combination of socio-economic, GIS, satellite, ● Soil sensitivity and plant susceptibility to diseases drone, and demographic data can potentially predict are used in isolation during the creation of crop diseases, demands, rainfall and other key classification models factors in food production ● There is a lack of open-source data for climate ● The combination of regression analysis and digital prediction transaction can provide forecasts of sale trends ● Instability and institutional corruption can ● Pest detection can be done earlier to prevent crop potentially slow progress loss Opportunities Threats ● Automated stockbreeding can be facilitated through ● Insufficient data can lead to poor predictions robotics and AI without temporal data ● AI has the predictive capability to give early ● Advances in AI-based farming can lead to warnings to mitigate extreme situations perpetuating the gap between small- and large-scale farming ● Smart farming techniques can be applied for efficient farm production and food allocation ● AI applications without a risk and impact analysis can compromise food security ● Optimised demand and supply food chain predictions to prevent food wastage ● Big data can be subjected to appropriation and abuse Source material: Palomares et al. 2021 Conference Proceedings 33

Current issues with the application of AI to agriculture The introduction of the appropriate data infrastructure can create countless new employment opportunities as Data-driven agricultural practices, precision agriculture well as improve the level of awareness and interest in and AI are viable approaches for dealing with the AI and its related processes. Although it requires large current and future problems small-hold farmers will investments in revenue and time, data driven agriculture face due to climate change. The implementation of has been shown to decrease cost and establish more these technologies requires large amounts of locally sustainable practices (Herbert 2019). applicable farm data since unique features such as climate, vegetation type and soil type can negatively AI improvements are not limited to crop production impact the viability of a crop. Additionally, data but also include animal husbandry, livestock farm infrastructure in the form of sensor data, servers, productivity and demand and supply chain optimisation. databases, data centres, trained professionals, geo- The aim of digitalisation and AI in agriculture is to spatial data will be necessary to create optimal, accurate reduce costs, increase yields, improve the quality of and pertinent agricultural models for the respective life of farmers and increase their incomes. It does these region (FAO 2019). by allowing farmers to make data driven decisions by keeping them updated on factors that influence Before image data can be fed into these agricultural production. These factors are not limited to data models, there must be sufficient processing power for collected on their farm but also includes web-based the organisation, cleaning and labelling of the images. data on demand and supply chain management and Often, specially trained subject matter specialists are marketing both locally and internationally. The current required to supplement these processes. The adoption existence of these datasets may be confined to file of advanced technologies as AI, smart agriculture and formats that are not conducive to AI implementation precision agriculture in SIDS may prove to be quite and in these cases the datasets will require restructuring difficult due to limited personnel with the required for implementation. This is a major factor for enacting skill set. This difficulty includes the lack of farmers AI models for smart agriculture and can be viewed with the appropriate education background to collect as a constraint preventing the adoption of precision their own data and build datasets (FAO 2019). agriculture. Figure 1. The AI readiness index of countries within the Caribbean and Latin America (Oxford Insights 2020). The UN list of SIDS within the Caribbean Region (United Nations 2019). These countries are evaluated that rank highest for AI readiness are as follows; based on common factors that affect the use of AI Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, St. Kitts and Nevis, in various industries. Data representativeness, data Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica, Dominican Republic availability, infrastructure, human capital, innovation 34 Conference Proceedings

capacity, vision, governance and adaptability are the Table 2 shows the overall score of each country along general factors that are be considered in comparing with a breakdown of the factors that contribute to AI the AI readiness of the Caribbean region of SIDS. readiness. Table 2. Aggregated data comparing the ranks of Caribbean SIDS (Oxford Insights 2020) Figure 3. A comparative bar chart of innovation capacity and adaptability for SIDS in the Caribbean Conference Proceedings 35

The AI readiness study conducted by Oxford Insights Although Trinidad and Tobago is the highest ranked draws on 33 indicators across 10 dimensions which in AI readiness in the Caribbean, the adoption of gives a more in depth understanding of AI readiness and agricultural AI and precision agriculture might be what it would mean for governments and organisations. negatively impacted by a lack of trust from the target Representation in data is limited in Latin America and audience. Ragbir et al. (2014) evaluated the factors the Caribbean. Most Caribbean SIDS have open data surrounding innovativeness in the agriculture sector; policies, but they are poorly implemented.Additionally, they concluded that there is potential for innovation data-sharing agreements and privacy regulations do not within the agriculture sector and the sector currently have clearly constructed frameworks. There is also the enjoys a modicum of success. However, a lot more potential for data bias within the region with respect to can be done to improve the access farmers have to up- gender issues and the representation of marginalised to-date information and technologies geared towards groups within the society (FAO 2019). data driven decisions. Ragbir et al. (2014) highlighted that climate change was having devastating effects on The regional analysis of the AI readiness study the sector and there is limited information available concluded that the evaluation of public problems is to small scale farmers that will allow them to adapt critical in deciding how a country should move forward. to these changes. This is an area of study that AI can A closer look at the scores gathered in the study shows enlighten for future farmers. that even the top-ranking Caribbean countries in the AI readiness index fall short of the world average at AI in the Caribbean 47.42 with respect to the AI readiness index. However, Figure 3 illustrates a high potential for adaptability. Because of the versatility of AI, it is a widely sought- after tool and potentially an economic equaliser. An additional component in the adoption of AI Within the Caribbean there have been numerous efforts within the agriculture sector is the target audience to advance AI development. Barbados has hosted for precision agriculture techniques. A study done in conferences to discuss the ethics of AI technologies. 2017 on the characteristics of Caribbean family farms Cuba has created research institutes to develop skills in highlighted that the level of education of farmers AI. Jamaica has championed the Caribbean AI initiative within the countries examined were skewed heavily in collaboration with UNESCO (United Nations 2019). towards primary and secondary levels of education. Trinidad and Tobago has spearheaded the development The majority of the group was between the ages of agricultural AI techniques through the FAAIR of forty to sixty years (Dolly and Ennis 2017). This project (Farming Adaptation and Artificial Intelligence portrayed an ageing population of farmers with a for Resilience) with usability at its forefront (Hosein limited educational background. Most governments 2022). within the Caribbean have incentivised farming in hopes of making the industry more sustainable and to The agriculture sector has seen some new growth in encourage young people to join the agriculture industry. terms of members of younger generations joining the This incentivisation is a major factor in the adoption of agriculture industry, however the industry is still at AI within the agriculture industry since the application risk. Factors such as climate change, pest outbreaks of AI hinges on the user’s ability to understand the and floods threaten the stability of the industry. AI is information provided by precision farming. The level currently being evaluated as a solution to public issues of information displayed must be palatable to the user. by some developing countries. However, within the agriculture sector, data and infrastructure is limited Ragbir et al. (2014) highlighted concerns that the since it requires specialised equipment. Moreover, data farming population was composed of ‘aged farmers appropriateness is a significant issue since appropriate with a low educational level and lack of knowledge datasets either do not exist or are privately owned. in modern technologies, who rely on traditional Training models on international data can prove to practices in managing their farms.’ They continued be erroneous since they apply to seasonal climates ‘There is also low application of science and and would not accurately represent a tropical climate technology’ and inferred that it may be due to the agricultural sector. As such its use in AI models for reliance on ‘non-government extension personnel, Caribbean SIDS would be inappropriate and hence for example, input suppliers, for advice.’ yield poor accuracy. 36 Conference Proceedings

Impact of AI within small farms centralised body dedicated to accountability and management of data needs to be established. In small scale agriculture especially within SIDS Additionally, AI and data use should be where land space is a major constraint, the ability to monitored for sale and misuse. optimise crop selection is a major factor in profitability. Internal competition between small farmers can reduce ● Investment - significant investments within the the value of crops within the market which can lead agriculture sector would increase production to major losses. Crop management is necessary for and revenue. Sensors and equipment are high monitoring growth and predicting the quality of crops end items that require skills to use hence produced. Using open-source libraries, crop metrics individuals need to be trained accordingly. can be determined and used as processed data to give However, the benefits of implementing AI insights on size and weight of crops. Additionally, outweigh the costs. the detection of weeds, pests and diseases will lead to improved and intelligent spraying techniques ● The internet is a valuable resource that thus reducing the use of pesticides and weedicides transmits petabytes of data valuable to making (Talaviya et al. 2020). The implementation of AI in data-driven decisions and as such it should be the field of agriculture will provide timelapse data that accessible to all individuals. will effectively measure the impact climate change is having on the Caribbean SIDS agriculture sector. This ● Knowledge and skills should be shared within is an important factor in determining food security for the regional community. A regional database the region. Some constraints of implementation are is possibly the best solution to implementing data availability, infrastructure, and the availability of precision agriculture within the region. skilled personnel. ● AI technologies especially in the area of Ethical considerations agriculture should be continuously maintained. The use of AI in agriculture has created unique ethical ● A major social impact for AI is transparency concerns. Most prominent of these concerns are and trust; however, it is difficult for humans intellectual property and the protection of a farmer’s to trust AI because it lacks emotive status data. The use of AI in agriculture has the potential to (Rose et al. 2021). This is quite challenging create a digital divide between those who can afford to in the agriculture sector (Pylianidis et al. create and utilise AI and those who are unable to afford 2021) because the data collected through the these tools. The sector is also susceptible to privacy and deployment of autonomous machines are security threats since corrupt governments, competitors largely unknown by the farmer (Stock and and traders can use the data collected nefariously. Gardezi 2021). Additionally, the use of AI enhanced robots must be closely monitored to ensure that they do not endanger ● The data represented from models should be the welfare of animals or damage the environment. usable to ensure understandability. Caribbean SIDS are fragile economies characterised Future considerations by stagnant growth and a limited number of skilled workers. Currently, the pressures faced If further development of the use of AI within the by governing bodies in light of COVID-19 Caribbean is to take place the following concerns have negatively affected the growth of AI in the should be addressed. agriculture sector. However, the increased food importation bills, now faced by governments, ● Data protection - clear rules and regulations demonstrates the need for AI in agriculture. for the use of data must be in place. Personal (De Clercq 2018). preference data can be misused by suppliers. According to the Oxford Readiness Index the future ● Governance - governments should have laws of AI within the Caribbean is ‘still undecided’ and it and regulations to govern the use of data and is due to all the factors that need to be addressed in an to protect the interest of their population. A expedited fashion. Conference Proceedings 37

Conclusion Herbert, Siân. 2019. Development Characteristics of Small Island Developing States. K4D This study discussed incorporated reports and research Helpdesk Report. Brighton, UK: Institute of from both local researchers and international entities. Development Studies. It highlights the advantages of implementing AI in the agriculture sector. Although efforts have been made to Hosein, Patrick. 2022 - National Geographic Society.” change the nature of the target audience it currently National Geographic. Accessed March 1, stands that the majority of the agricultural community 2022. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/ are aged individuals with minimal educational find-explorers/patrick-hosein. backgrounds. IntechOpen 2019. https://www.intechopen.com/ As such, in order for meaningful development to chapters/70496. “Small Island Developing take place, the issues highlighted must be considered States (SIDS) and ICTs.” ITU. https://www. moving forward. AI within the Caribbean is slowly itu.int/en/ITU-D/LDCs/Pages/Publications/ gaining momentum; however, it does not compare to SIDS/ICTs.aspx the work being done internationally. Strategic changes must be made at a local, regional and governmental International Society of Precision Agriculture 2022. levels to implement agricultural AI. Investments into “Precision AG Definition: International infrastructure is a necessity along with developing a Society of Precision Agriculture.” Accessed skilled workforce. March 1, 2022. https://www.ispag.org/about/ definition. The implementation of AI in agriculture affects not only the profitability of farmers but can have positive Oxford Insights. 2020. “Government AI Readiness impacts on the use of chemicals and the quality of Index 2020.” Accessed February 28, 2022. crops. The data collected will have the potential to help https://www.oxfordinsights.com/government- farmers adapt to climate change as the phenomena ai-readiness-index-2020. continues to worsen. Overall, the Caribbean has the potential to develop a more productive agriculture Palomares, I., Martínez-Cámara, E., Montes, R., sector from the use of AI. García-Moral, P., Chiachio, M., Chiachio, J., Alonso, S., Melero, F.J., Molina, D., References Fernández, B., Moral, C., Marchena, R., De Vargas, J.P., Herrera, F., 2021. A De Clercq, Matthieu. 2018. “Agriculture 4.0: panoramic view and swot analysis of artificial The future of farming technology.” World intelligence for achieving the sustainable Government Summit, February 2018 development goals by 2030: progress and :3-https://www.marshmclennan.com/content/ prospects. Applied Intelligence 51, 6497– dam/mmc-web/insights/publications/2018/ 6527.. doi:10.1007/s10489-021-02264-y november/agriculture-4-0/Oliver-Wyman- Agriculture-4.0.pdf Pylianidis C, Osinga S and Athanasiadis I. N. 2021. “Introducing digital twins to agriculture”. Dolly, David, and Ennis, Glenroy. (2017) Comput Electron Agric 184:105942 “Characterisation of Family Farms in the Caribbean: A Study of Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Ragbir S, Ganpat W G and Narine L K. 2014. and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,” “Innovations and successes among vegetable Published by Inter-American Institute of farmers in Trinidad, West Indies”. Tropical Tropical Agriculture. Agriculture (Trin), 91: 47-57 FAO. 2019. “Study on the State of Agriculture Rose DC, Lyon J, de Boon A, Hanheide M and in the Caribbean,” Food and Agriculture Pearson S 2021. Responsible development of Organization of the United Nations, and autonomous robotics in agriculture. Nat Food Caribbean Development Bank https://doi. 2:306–309 org/10.4060/ca4726en. Accessed March 12, 2022. 38 Conference Proceedings

Stock R and Gardezi M. 2021. Make bloom and let United Nations. 2019. “Caribbean Countries Face wither: Biopolitics of precision agriculture at Complex Challenges to Advancing on the dawn of surveillance capitalism. Geoforum Fulfilment of the 2030 Agenda.” Forum of the 122:193–203 Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development - 2019. United Talaviya, Tanha, Dhara Shah, Nivedita Patel, Nations, July 21, 2020. https://foroalc2030. Hiteshri Yagnik, and Manan Shah. 2020. cepal.org/2019/en/news/caribbean-countries- “Implementation of Artificial Intelligence in face-complex-challenges-advancing- Agriculture for Optimisation of Irrigation and fulfillment-2030-agenda#:~:text=The%20 Application of Pesticides and Herbicides.” current%20international%20political%20 Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture. Elsevier, and,and%20the%20burden%20of%20high. April 22, 2020. https://www.sciencedirect. com/science/article/pii/S258972172030012X. Yinka-Banjo, Chika, and Olasupo Ajayi. 2019. “Sky- Farmers: Applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in Agriculture.” In: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. IntechOpen. Conference Proceedings 39

The evaluation of machine learning models in the agriculture sector of Caribbean SIDS as it applies to weed detection and water-stress in Capsicum annuum and Brassica chinensis L. mono-cropped fields for artificial intelligence application development Fazeeia Mohammed1, Jade Chattergoon1, Roganci Fontelera1, Omar Mohammed2, Professor Patrick Hosein1 1TTLab 2Cropper Foundation Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] This digitisation of agriculture is key in ensuring climate resilience and sustainability, particularly in national agricultural sectors in the Caribbean. Such efforts increase knowledge and information availability to stakeholders, strengthen the agricultural value chains and present more attractive opportunities for younger persons in an ageing sector. This study reported on the civil society- led digitisation project in Trinidad and Tobago, Farming Adaptation & Artificial Intelligence for Resilience (FAAIR), that seeks to use artificial intelligence (AI) to develop an integrated suite of vegetation indices, deployed using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over landscapes and farming systems characteristic of small island states. Four supervised machine learning models were implemented using the pilot data which was collected using a Phantom V4 Pro UAV (drone). The study focused on applying the models to two types of crops: Capsicum annuum and Brassica Chinensis L. which are planted year-round in Trinidad and Tobago. The application of weed detection yielded accuracy scores of 0.88, 0.32 and 0.92 for the respective Random Forest, Naïve Bayes and XG Boost models. Keywords: Remote sensing, artificial intelligence, unmanned aerial vehicles, nvidia, GPU, models, MATLAB, jaccard index, accuracy, kernel tricks Definitions: Remote sensing- This is the process of detecting and monitoring physical characteristics by measuring emitted radiation or reflected light at a distance. Artificial Intelligence- A set of computer systems with the capability to mimic intelligent human decisions and behaviour. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - An aircraft which does not require a pilot or crew on board. NVIDIA - (NVIDIA Corporation) An American multinational technology company GPU- (Graphics Processing Unit) Technology which permits high performance for large workloads. Models- A set of algorithms based on mathematical concepts which can be used to solve problems or accomplish tasks. MATLAB- A programming and computing platform which provided tools which were used to label pixel data. 40 Conference Proceedings

Jaccard Index- (Intersection Over Union) A performance metric used to gauge how well image segmentation models perform. Accuracy- (Number of correct predictions/Total number of predictions) A performance metric commonly used to evaluate classification models. Kernel tricks- A method where linear data is projected onto a higher dimensional space in order to simplify a classification problem by separating classes by a plane rather than a line. Introduction of the technologies being increasingly applied in place of traditional farming practices. There are various Small Island Developing States (SIDS) face many factors which influence the time to sow seeds, the most complex challenges due to their unique political suitable type of crop to plant, how to prepare the soil and economic backgrounds. Issues such as a lack of and many other important decisions that a farmer must funding, technical infrastructure and resources have make on a regular basis. For example, these factors undoubtedly caused Caribbean states to lag in many may include pollution levels and climatic changes areas of technological advancements, digitisation, and which can be very difficult for a farmer to constantly Artificial Intelligence (AI) (FAO 2022a). Digitisation track and adjust to suit. Additionally, nutrition profiles in the agricultural sector refers to the conversion of required for a plant based on its environment and agricultural data into a format that a computer can weed control can also pose challenging decisions and process. AI involves algorithms that use the results of calculations to be carried out by the farmer. These digitisation as inputs to mimic decisions and processes processes can often require experience or involve trial similar to that of a farmer or agriculture expert. and error. AI is already being used to monitor crop health, aid in weed detection, perform soil analysis In 2020, a team of young scientists emerging from and in weather forecasting (Stawarz 2022). As farmers TTLAB (a local research organisation which applies adapt to these new technologies, they will develop new machine learning and AI to different sectors) partnered skills and knowledge about their farms through data- with The Cropper Foundation, Microsoft Azure and driven practices. the National Geographic Society to develop a new AI based application which can be applied to Caribbean The United Nations has recognised the poor state of farmers and their local environments. Additionally, Food Security in SIDS, as their high dependence on NVIDIA Corporation specifically donated equipment food imports has grown exponentially over the past to be used by the team to support the initiative. The three decades. Food security in the Caribbean and resulting Farming Adaptation & Artificial Intelligence Pacific is further threatened by the continuous inflation for Resilience (FAAIR) project seeks to build of food prices and the state of underdeveloped local Caribbean-based agricultural datasets and AI-powered food production systems. Additionally, more than applications which can assist local small-holder half of Caribbean and Pacific SIDS import over 80% farmers in areas of water stress and weed detection. of their food (FAO 2022b). The effects of low food security also have far-reaching effects on the people. As the global population increases, so too does the Poor food security is tied to high malnutrition rates as demand for an increase in agricultural production. It well as nutrition-related disabilities, mal-development, is estimated that agricultural production is required and death (Hickey and Unwin 2020). to increase by 70% to fulfil these demands of feeding more than nine billion persons by the year 2050 In addition to the high risk of poor food security, a (Fintech News 2021). Due to the impact of Covid-19, study conducted by Ganpat et al (2014) highlighted Caribbean SIDS has experienced decreasing levels of that small-holder vegetable and non-vegetable farmers food security (Hickey and Unwin 2020). Therefore, to in Trinidad had limited education and compliance with preserve food security in future years, we must adapt to good agricultural practices was overall very low. Of more efficient agricultural practices and methodologies the 196 farmers in the study, only 8.6% had tertiary which can consistently yield optimal results. There are education and 40.8% had secondary education which several challenges faced by farmers today which can limits their ability to compete with the vast selection, be solved using technology (OECD 2022). AI is one convenience, timeliness and consistent quality of Conference Proceedings 41

imported foods available in supermarkets. This is to label the pixels as weeds, crops, as well as water and especially difficult when these farmers face losses in stressed crops according to the problem defined. Image crops, livestock and ultimately revenue due to common segmentation is the process of dividing an image natural causes such as flooding, hurricanes, heavy rainy into different regions based on the characteristics of seasons, drought etc. Additionally, it is difficult to its component pixels for analysis. It is used in areas recover from these challenges financially and without of filmmaking and medicine among others. The task recourse, the number of small farmers dwindles. of image segmentation can be approached in several ways. For this research, the approach taken is pixel Climate change is also a majorly disruptive factor in the classification (Panda and Rosenfeld 1978). Each pixel livelihood of farmers. Climate change has been known is assigned an independent identity which corresponds to affect the levels of precipitation globally (Dore 2005). to one of the labels in the training data. Features of the The variation is due to increased global temperatures pixels such as colour and texture are used in the data to and a rise in sea levels. In Trinidad and Tobago help the model classify the pixels accordingly. specifically, there has been an increase in flooding during the rainy season which has negative effects The use of unmanned aerial vehicles, such as drones, on agriculture within the country (Fontes de Meira in agriculture, is rapidly growing in popularity as it and Phillips 2005). Flooding causes plants to become offers many benefits over satellite imagery. Thus, a over-watered; some common effects of over-watering Phantom V4 Pro was acquired to facilitate efficient in plants are root rot, leaf scorch, leaf discolouration image data collection. The data is cleaned and labelled. and stunted growth. Another consequence of increased These images are being used to compile Caribbean- rainfall is an increase in the rate of weed overgrowth based datasets and are being incorporated into several which often competes for resources with crops. The machine learning and cloud-based deep learning overuse of herbicides can result in herbicide resistance models developed by the team. The project seeks to (Hickey and Unwin 2020). This makes managing the deliver an AI-powered mobile application that can number of weeds growing between crops difficult. assess the water-stress levels of Brassica chinensis The implementation of models to detect both weed L. and determine the weed-crop ratio in a specified overgrowth and water stress are important in resource area via image segmentation. These functions can be management in agriculture. Potentially it can reduce summarised into two main solutions referred to as: how often farmers have to water or use herbicides on weeds. ● Water-stress detection ● Weed detection In 2017, the UN Global Action Programme (GAP) on Food Security and Nutrition in Small Island This application is being built with local farmers in Developing States introduced the following objectives mind. They will be able to simply upload image data into for improving the state of food security in SIDS: the application to receive information on their crops. “strengthening enabling environments; improving For example, farmers will be able to upload images of sustainability, resilience and nutrition sensitivity Brassica chinensis L. and view the parts of the crop of local food systems; and empowering people and which are water stressed with visual results. They will communities.” (Hickey and Unwin 2020) also be able to view statistics and suggestions based on the extent of the damage to the crops. Farmers will also The FAAIR project initially chose two common crops be able to upload images of their Capsicum annuum grown by small-holder farmers, namely, Capsicum plants and receive data and suggestions relating to annuum and Brassica chinensis L. which can both be weed coverage around the crops. harvested throughout the year. The team is collaborating with several smallholder farmers across the country for The application is designed to provide accessible the experimental use of their farms. insights and recommendations which can assist farmers in their day-to-day activities at no cost. With FAAIR uses a special application of AI known as this project, the team intends to highlight the potential computer vision which allows the computer to process to solve common agricultural problems through AI images or videos at a high level with capabilities like and technology as well as start conversations that that of humans. The machine learning models used will lead to achieving the same for other public sectors in perform image segmentation on the image data collected Caribbean SIDS. 42 Conference Proceedings

Methodology semantic segmentation approach was used to label pixels in hopes of capturing fine-grain inferences by Data was collected from August 2021 to April 2022 on the supervised classification machine learning models the weekends. Data was collected between 8 am to 11 used. The labelled images and original images were am to ensure optimal lighting was available. then fed into the respective classification models. These supervised machine learning models were Weed detection trained on labelled data. After the models were trained, their performances were evaluated using the Jaccard Small-scale vegetable farmers were contacted through index and accuracy. The performance of each model UWI, NAMDEVCO and The Cropper Foundation was then optimised, and the models tested on new data for data collection with respect to all the needs of that the model had not trained on. The results can be the project. They were contacted through phone calls viewed in new corresponding images generated with where the project was explained and the farmers’ pixel labels assigned by the models. The respective willingness to participate was determined. The video model performances for weed detection follow: The data of the Capsicum annuum mono-cropped field XG Boost algorithm produced the highest accuracy, the was collected using a DJI Phantom V4 Pro drone. Random Forest algorithm produced the second highest This unmanned aerial vehicle was used through the and the Linear SVM algorithm produced the third manual flight application DJI pro. It takes up images highest of the three. The lowest accuracy produced at approximately 3 m off the ground at a speed of 2 m/ came from the Naive Bayes algorithm. Refer to Table sec. Videos were collected, and frames were extracted 1 for the numerical results. using a python-coded Jupyter notebook at an interval of 30 frames at each data collection site. The extracted Water-stress images were then filtered for duplicates and redundant data. Manually the images were scanned and filtered for An experimental farm was used to generate the data any inappropriate objects or reflective surfaces. Image required to train the machine learning models. The augmentation techniques such as filtering, rotating, farm is located at 10.26 N, 61.29 W near Devil’s flipping, cropping and more were then applied to the Woodyard in South Trinidad, and its suitability was images to generate additional data which made the based on the owner’s understanding and willingness to models more robust. The images were uploaded into participate in the study that potentially would damage MATLAB (TM) where they are labelled by trained a significant portion of his crop. The soil is composed individuals. Caption 1 shows a labelled image. of densely packed clay minerals coupled and fine particles. Ideally, the algorithms were designed to binarily determine if a plant was water-stressed or not water-stressed. In order to accomplish the task of classification examples of both water-stress and not water-stress needed to be collected on open field data so the models created through the application of algorithms would be directly applicable to farm data. The clay-like soil retained water extremely well and was a suitable medium for this experiment. A 50 by 40 m area was separated into nine beds. The beds were at a 15-degree slope to get a variation of collected data. Caption 1: Image showing the labelling of the data The first three rows were over-watered, rows 4 - 6 were collected where the blue labels represent weeds, and moderately watered and rows 7 - 9 were not watered. the orange represents the Capsicum annuum crop. Drip feed watering was implemented and using a measuring cylinder the water at the end of the feed was A Deco 01 v2 graphics tablet was used to assist with collected through a feed hole until the threshold was the labelling. The data was labelled using super-pixel, met. The Brassica chinensis L. crops were planted 30 the brush tool and the free-hand assist tool. This cm apart. The over-watered plants exceeded 76 ml of water and the moderately watered plants were given 50 - 60 ml of water (Tuquero et al. (2018). Conference Proceedings 43

Rows 1 - 3 Rows 4 - 6 Rows 7 - 9 Caption 2: Images collected from the water stress experiment. Rows 1 – 3 were over-watered. Rows 4 – 6 were moderately watered; Rows 7 – 9 were not watered Caption 2 shows the images collected from the three XG Boost consistently had the highest accuracy different watering regimes. Through the application of for both the water stress dataset and weed detection these thresholds, it was possible to observe the physical dataset. For water stress, these results were closely changes the plant went through as it was over-watered, followed by the random forest classifier which was the however, rows 7 - 9 did not show the effects of being second-best performing model that used supervised under-watered. This was due to heavy rainfall from learning. The Naive Bayes model produced the third November - December 2021. The models directly learn highest accuracy and lastly, the Linear SVM produced the features of over-watering through the labelling of the lowest accuracy. Table 2 displays the numerical images. The soil type was ideal since it allowed for results for each model described above. the retention of water; however, the time of year the experiment was conducted introduced limitations with Table 2: Accuracy of the four models used in the water- the collection of under-watered crop data. For labelling stress data study the applications of the models and computer vision were considered as such visible instances of water Model Name Accuracy stress were labelled as water-stress otherwise the plant Random Forest 0.70 was labelled as not-stressed. The data was labelled in a Naive Bayes 0.40 binary format to facilitate the use of binary classifiers. SVM 0.33 The images were labelled using MATLAB and XG Boost 0.76 implemented using semantic segmentation techniques. The use of images required additional processing power Overall, Table 2 shows the best performing model and memory thus, Jupyter notebooks and TTLAB’s to be XG Boost at 0.76. Naive Bayes and SVM both graphics processing unit (GPU) were utilised for had poor performances at 0.40 and 0.33 respectively. model building and increasing computational ability Random Forest had a relatively better performance at respectively. 0.70 accuracy. Results See the pairs of Brassica chinensis L. image samples for each of the following categories: Table 1: Accuracy of the three models used in the weed detection study. Model Accuracy Random Forest 0.88 Naive Bayes 0.32 XG Boost 0.92 Linear SVM 0.37 44 Conference Proceedings