With Nestlé’s future operations in the balance …

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­[email protected]

Dairy farmer John Lennard is hop­ing the Gov­ern­ment comes up with a so­lu­tion to keep them all gain­ful­ly em­ployed, af­ter Nestlé an­nounced it had be­gun a strate­gic re­view of its op­er­a­tions in T&T, in­clud­ing ex­plor­ing the pos­si­ble sale of its dairy and juices busi­ness.

For years, Lennard said Nestlé did not sup­port and en­cour­age the farm­ers to make the in­dus­try vi­able.

“As far as I am con­cerned, they can pack up and go from here. We don’t need them. If you can’t do bet­ter, pack up and go.

“They have to pack up and go if they can­not take the farm­ers’ milk. If you want to get some­body else and sell over the com­pa­ny to some­body else, it’s bet­ter you give each farmer $1 mil­lion… and we go han­dle we sto­ry,” Lennard said, his voice crack­ing as he spoke to Guardian Me­dia.

Nestlé is a Swiss multi­na­tion­al food and drink pro­cess­ing com­pa­ny with a sub­sidiary in Val­sayn.

The com­pa­ny has been op­er­at­ing in T&T for more than 60 years.

The un­ex­pect­ed an­nounce­ment of the dairy plant’s sale has been met with mixed re­ac­tions among farm­ers, who have sup­plied and sold raw milk to Nestlé for decades.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has di­rect­ed two min­is­ters to meet with Nes­tle’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives to work on the mat­ter.

With the com­pa­ny go­ing on the mar­ket, 200 jobs could be lost.

As a sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion farmer, Lennard, 70, said the news was dis­turb­ing.

“It’s not a nice feel­ing.”

For over 50 years, Lennard has been a milk sup­pli­er to Nestlé. He sells 150 litres a day. His fa­ther was al­so a long­time provider to Nestlé.

Now, his son is al­so step­ping in­to the fam­i­ly busi­ness, con­tin­u­ing that tra­di­tion. He es­ti­mat­ed his fam­i­ly has in­vest­ed $5 mil­lion in pens, trac­tors, milk­ing ma­chines and equip­ment for his farm.

“Is no lit­tle bit of cows we have. This is what send us to school.”

But with the im­pend­ing sale of the plant, Lennard said their fu­ture looks bleak.

In 2014, the sec­tor had 150 farm­ers who sold 3.94 mil­lion litres of milk an­nu­al­ly.

By 2024, there were on­ly 60 farm­ers, with Nestlé re­ceiv­ing 1.73 mil­lion litres of the milk they pro­duced an­nu­al­ly. The farm­ers are paid $5.36 for a litre of raw cow’s milk.

The Gov­ern­ment pays Nestlé a sub­sidy of $1.50 for each litre.

Lennard said the farm­ers gave their blood, sweat and tears to the com­pa­ny.

“We worked like slaves in the field,” he said, adding that, at times, he felt they were not treat­ed fair­ly by Nestlé.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Lennard said Nestlé bought their milk for $10 per litre and, af­ter a few weeks, re­vert­ed to the $5.36. He was one of the farm­ers who ben­e­fit­ed from the price hike.

How­ev­er, Lennard al­so ad­mit­ted there is dis­uni­ty among the farm­ers, stat­ing that if they had formed in­to a co­op­er­a­tive years ago, they might have been in a po­si­tion to ac­quire the plant.

“No­body ex­pect­ed this to hap­pen. Ah shame­ful for us in this coun­try. We go­ing back­wards rather than for­ward.”

He ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment not to let a for­eign com­pa­ny sink their teeth in­to the milk pro­cess­ing plant.

“We are hop­ing the Gov­ern­ment comes up with a so­lu­tion soon,” he said.

Fel­low dairy farmer Resh­ma Kaladeen said many of the farm­ers held the view that more could have been done to im­prove the in­dus­try.

“The farm­ers were treat­ed bad­ly. Yes, the farm­ers will be an­gry with Nestlé be­cause, as I say, is years of bad treat­ment…is years of short pay. We weren’t treat­ed nice. But at the end of the day, Nestlé was still pur­chas­ing our milk every day. When Nestlé packs up and go, we don’t know who will take over. We are in the dark.”

Kaladeen called on Gov­ern­ment to buy the plant to save the in­dus­try from col­lapse.

Ex­press­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments was Waller­field farmer Samuel Ogiste.

“I agree the Gov­ern­ment should step in and help the farm­ers.”

He said his on­ly fear was when a gov­ern­ment takes con­trol of a pri­vate busi­ness “some­times rack­et does go on.”

Agri­cul­tur­al an­a­lyst and dairy farmer Dr Don­ny Rogers said Nestlé has sig­nalled its de­par­ture from the mar­ket at a time when the coun­try has no oth­er UHT (ul­tra-high tem­per­a­ture) plant for the farm­ers’ sur­vival.

“In my opin­ion, it is high­ly dis­re­spect­ful and dan­ger­ous to the longevi­ty of the sec­tor af­ter they ex­it,” Rogers said.

Rogers said giv­en the length of time Nestlé has op­er­at­ed its plant in Trinidad, they owe it to the sec­tor and farm­ers “not to ex­it the mar­ket in a man­ner that can be detri­men­tal to the con­ti­nu­ity of pro­duc­tion.”

He said such a de­ci­sion did not hap­pen overnight.

“I don’t want to spec­u­late. But that plant is sig­nif­i­cant enough that they can ship it to an­oth­er coun­try if they want. I am not say­ing pick up your rig and go. But I am say­ing be­cause of the scale of pro­duc­tion glob­al­ly, noth­ing pre­vents Nestlé from lever­ag­ing on that as­set by de­ploy­ing it in a coun­try where the out­put is much more sig­nif­i­cant. I am look­ing at it from an eco­nom­ic sense.”

If this mat­ter is not ad­dressed swift­ly, Rogers pre­dict­ed se­ri­ous con­se­quences.

“In the ab­sence of a UHT pro­cess­ing plant, it could lead to a se­ri­ous de­cline or clo­sure of the in­dus­try. There are no two ways about that.”

How­ev­er, Rogers said he would not sup­port the Gov­ern­ment get­ting in­to milk pro­cess­ing.

“This can have the farm­ers on the edge. A gov­ern­ment can shut down the plant at any time. I am say­ing if we want to be sus­tain­able, it should be a pri­vate en­ti­ty to make that in­vest­ment.”

Rogers said should the plant ei­ther be shut down com­plete­ly or its new buy­ers move away from dairy-re­lat­ed prod­ucts, farm­ers would have to force their an­i­mals through “a dry­ing off” process so they would no longer pro­duce milk.

Those an­i­mals, he said, will even­tu­al­ly have to be butchered. One cow costs be­tween $10,000 and $15,000, so farm­ers will in­cur ma­jor loss­es.

“Such a sce­nario will ab­solute­ly de­stroy the dairy sec­tor.”

In ad­di­tion, the 200 labour­ers on the farms will have to be sent home, while State-owned Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) will lose sales with their dairy feeds.

Rogers said the sale of the plant could dis­rupt the lives of hun­dreds.

In the last decade, Rogers said the in­dus­try suf­fered a host of prob­lems that led to a de­cline in milk pro­duc­tion and an in­crease in pro­duc­tion costs.

Apart from rustlers steal­ing their an­i­mals, Rogers said Nestlé with­drew their sup­port, which in­clud­ed free vet­eri­nary care, ar­ti­fi­cial in­sem­i­na­tion and seeds to main­tain their pas­tures.

The in­dus­try al­so failed to at­tract new farm­ers, and com­mit­ted farm­ers were not pro­vid­ed with any de­vel­op­men­tal pro­grammes.

He said the $5.36 farm­ers re­ceive for a litre of milk was un­sus­tain­able.

“It was a price that just al­lowed the farm­ers to ex­ist. I think a fair price should have been be­tween $6.00 and $6.50 a litre. So over ten years, in my opin­ion, it was a sys­tem­at­ic de­struc­tion of the sec­tor.”

Giv­en the coun­try’s land space, weath­er con­di­tions and ca­pac­i­ty, Rogers said farm­ers can pro­duce 20 mil­lion litres of milk a year over time.

Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Prof Mark Wud­di­vi­ra, said the an­nounce­ment by Nestlé would have cre­at­ed “pan­ic” and “chal­lenges” for the farm­ers who sold their milk ex­clu­sive­ly to the com­pa­ny to eke out a liv­ing.

Wud­di­vi­ra said when a com­pa­ny has a mo­nop­oly on a prod­uct, “it makes us very vul­ner­a­ble. That is the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that we’re see­ing.”

While the sit­u­a­tion is seen as a chal­lenge, Wud­di­vi­ra said it al­so presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T to look in­ward and cre­ate val­ue-added prod­ucts such as cheese, but­ter and yo­ghurts, us­ing fresh milk to strength­en the sec­tor.

“When you sell your pri­ma­ry prod­uct, you sit at the bot­tom of the val­ue chain,” Wu­di­vi­ra point­ed out.

He said the Gov­ern­ment, pri­vate sec­tor and pro­duc­ers must come up with a strat­e­gy to re­de­vel­op the sec­tor.

“What­ev­er de­ci­sion that we are mak­ing…it should be the sec­tor that is be­ing em­pow­ered to run it­self rather than putting politi­cians to run it.”

Ear­li­er this year, Wud­di­vi­ra said UWI re­ceived a let­ter from Nestlé in­form­ing them that they could no longer ac­cept their cows’ milk from their Field Sta­tion in Val­sayn, due to some re­struc­tur­ing. The milk they sold to Nestlé was sig­nif­i­cant, he said.

Up­on re­ceiv­ing the let­ter, Wud­di­vi­ra said his ini­tial thought was that Nestlé was prob­a­bly fo­cus­ing more on the farm­ers to in­crease their pro­duc­tion. He ad­mit­ted he was wrong.

At times, Wud­di­vi­ra said, Nestlé want­ed to re­duce the price of their milk.

“So, I could imag­ine if we had those chal­lenges as a uni­ver­si­ty, I could imag­ine the chal­lenge that a farmer would be hav­ing.”

UWI has 80 dairy cows and sells pas­teurised milk to su­per­mar­kets.

“I was wish­ing that if UWI had the mon­ey to buy the plant…but I know we don’t have the mon­ey,” adding UWI has the ex­per­tise and land.

“We have what it takes to make it vi­able.”

The Sun­day Guardian was told that on Fri­day night, an emer­gency meet­ing was held with some of the farm­ers in Waller­field to dis­cuss their next move. The farm­ers al­so plan to hold a me­dia con­fer­ence ear­ly this week.

On Fri­day, Guardian Me­dia reached out to ask Nestlé T&T’s head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions Siti Jones-Gor­don how soon the com­pa­ny plans to meet with the farm­ers.

Jones-Gor­don said Nestlé has al­ready is­sued a po­si­tion state­ment to the me­dia and could not com­ment be­yond that.

“Every­thing we are do­ing is still at an ear­ly stage.”

The con­cerns raised by the farm­ers were al­so brought to Jones-Gor­don’s at­ten­tion, who promised to look in­to the mat­ter.

“I can’t com­ment on it right now be­cause I don’t have the facts,” Jones-Gor­don said.