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Cacao And The Community In Trio
posted (May 12, 2016)
The Toledo villagers of Trio are getting major assistance from the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre. The 5C's has, through funding from UK-D-FID, provided for 30,00 cacao seedlings to be donated and planted by Trio farmers.

35 individuals, 10 of who are women, will be able to benefit from the program, which also comes with over 900 acres in land concession by the Government in the area of the Maya Mountain Forest Reserve.

The representative from the 5Cs explained how it will work:

Mark Bynoe, Head, Project Development Management of CCCCC
"It's not a case that these issues are new, but the idea was that these issues are likely going to be exacerbated with a change in climate regime. With that focus we then looked at projects we had within the center that will possibly be able to finance this particular initiative and we were able to find $250,000 U.S. under the UK DFID program. So for the last 2 years we have been funding this initiative in the Trio area. Climate change is indicating a more dryer spell or much more extreme events occurring, limited precipitation, and as a result, some of the very crops that we have been cultivating timely memorial are likely not to be as resilient as with a normal climate regime."

Isabel Rash, Farmer - Trio Village
"What we do is we prepare our nursery in place. Its 28-30 thousand saplings (small plant). In the future, we don't want to work for somebody else, we want to work for our own and from there when we start to produce more, then my thoughts is that I can maybe just be a boss."

Mark Bynoe, Head, Project Development Management of CCCCC
"One specific area had to do with the need to construct some shade houses for protected agriculture. Why is this necessary? Because the whole concept of agro-forestry in that area is so that we can have crops coming in at varied periods of time. The need for the shade houses is to ensure that we can pursue some cash crop farming in the immediate future. Revenue will be generated, the farmers will begin to see some returns as the annual crops are maturing like the bananas, beans, plantains and so forth. Down the road is the Cacao plants, we have planted thus far about 25,000 Cacao plants. We are hoping to increase that maybe to another 25,000 or buy another 25,000 somewhere to about 50,000 going forward, so that we have a sustainable income to start with. So that farmers are less prone to go logging and deforesting areas. So you're taking pressure off the land. The 3rd element is that it helps with soil protection; once we are helping to protect the soil it also helps with the integrity of your farms and your rivers which are vital for the very crops that they are cultivating."

As you heard a part of the program is educate the farmers on how they can wean themselves off slash and burn farming, which continuing to maintain their incomes to provide for their families.

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