Lauders Agro Processors – The Journey

05.SEPT.08

Editor: A journey effectively starts with the first physical application (STEP), we all know that. But a considerable amount of time precedes that. The LAUDERS AGRO PROCESSORS (LAP) has started that journey by purchasing and preparing a number of the root crops that we have always produced for domestic consumption and export.{{more}} Hitherto it was only in the crude state. They have now gone to another level; the products are now peeled and vacuumed packed for chilled open counters in supermarkets.

This journey has now taken LAP to yet another level for the frozen counters; this new level effectively reduces both the cost of electricity and the high cost of vacuum packaging material to another process that is appropriate for freezing. One hopes that in this journey, the new management of LAP would immediately take advantage of our bounty of breadfruit, have them roasted and packaged for the frozen counters in our domestic supermarkets as well as for export.

There are a multiplicity of very good reasons why breadfruit using the above process is economically one of our best commercial options, for example; this preparation does not need electricity, liquid petroleum gas or even coal. We can use dry wood from the trees that we are hewing. Unlike the imported potatoes, breadfruit is not a root crop so its starch content is much less. Not only that, roasted breadfruit has better benefits than rice or flower.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines has a very serious problem which needs to be addressed very urgently with a genuine sense of nationalism. LAP is a joint venture between Windward Island Banana Development and Exporting Company (WIBDCO) and National Properties Ltd (A company of the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines). Is there not a place in LAP for the private sector? Why are we only seeing LAP products in the FOOD CITY supermarket (a branch of National Properties)?

Another matter hindering our development is the absence of an Agricultural Research and Development Laboratory operated exclusively by trained and experienced Vincentians. They would provide us with specific information, for example, what is the nutritional content of roasted breadfruit and the other packaged root crops? What should be our daily intake of them?

The time has long past for independent countries’ dependence on external sources regionally and internationally, if only for the purpose of confidentiality in the embryonic stage.

Stanley M Quammie