Caribbean Beat — March/April 2019 (#156)

where he joined the Merchant Navy. He spent
eleven years working on tankers in the Middle
East, Southeast Asia, and South America — far
from verdant and fertile Moruga. He returned
to Trinidad in 2003, launched his own marine
services company, and took up residence near
Port of Spain. Rice farming was the furthest thing
from his mind.
After speaking with his uncles at the time of
his father’s illness, Forgenie started exploring the
reasons why hill rice had declined so badly, and
sought to rediscover for himself the art of rice
farming. His first stop was the farm of Miss Patrice,
an eighty-six-year-old woman.
“I was working for myself, so I had the time,”
Forgenie says. “For two months, I would drive
down on a weekend, stay at my family’s house
in Basse Terre, and go see what Miss Patrice was
doing. Soon enough, I realised that rice work is so
labour intensive, it just turns you off.”
“The tradition was, from the start of
December through January we would eat
rice on a Sunday,” says Mark Forgenie
But he was not dissuaded. Inspired by what
his father’s neurosurgeon had told him about the
benefits of hill rice, Forgenie felt he had to do something.
“Dr Maharaj never did the research, but
had anecdotal evidence from his stroke patients
who used the rice as a porridge every morning
and evening as part of their therapy. He said they
recovered in half the usual time, and ninety per
cent of them recovered. I realised there was a
medical and scientific thing about this rice, that’s
not like other rice.”
So, since 2009, when his father had that stroke,
Forgenie — supported by his wife Cassie
— has been literally travelling the world to
find ways to make the farming of Moruga hill rice
more efficient and profitable. He set up Vista Dorado
Estates on his family’s land, with the belief that
farming could be made easier if there was equipment
suited to the hilly terrain of Moruga. “I knew the
answer was mechanisation, but there was no research
about it. I went to the Ministry of Agriculture and
they said they tried it, but they failed.”
He was told by ministry officials that he should
expect to fail as well, as there was no equipment on
the market that could help. Forgenie was amazed
at the negativity. However, once you meet Mark
Forgenie, it doesn’t take long to recognise that he’s
passionate, determined, and extremely astute.
After failed experiments with local heavy
equipment distributors, Forgenie sat down and
drew a model of the kind of equipment he felt was
needed for the terrain in Moruga. His quest for the
right equipment took him to China, where he met
with a company who bought one of his designs.
They were so impressed, they took it into mass
production, and Forgenie is now the Caribbean
distributor.
Having solved that part of the equation, it was
all systems go. The Forgenies set out their plans for
getting Moruga hill rice into the mainstream, via
their company Caribbean Sea and Air Marketing.
They worked closely with government agencies,
and developed highly positive relationships with the
Intellectual Property Office and ExportTT, Trinidad
and Tobago’s national export facilitation agency.
ExportTT helped the Forgenies with courses
in key areas like the principles of packaging and
labelling. And in 2018, Caribbean Sea and Air
Marketing received a TT$317,000 grant from the
Ministry of Trade to improve technology in their
manufacturing process.
“As an outsider, someone who never grew up
in Moruga, I wondered, why is this rice not on the
shelves?” says Cassie Forgenie. “We had to package
the rice professionally, because traditionally,
it was sold in a paper bag at the San Fernando
Market.”
She explains that a major turning point came at
T&T’s 2018 Trade and Investment Convention, one
of the biggest trade shows in the Caribbean. Here
the Forgenies met with officials from S.M. Jaleel,
a beverage company that sells their drinks up the
Caribbean and through the Caribbean diaspora.
The result was an international distribution agreement
for Moruga hill rice. You can now find Vista
Dorado Moruga hill rice on the shelves at all major
supermarkets in T&T.
I’ve tried the rice myself, and I can attest to
its delicious nutty flavour, particularly enhanced
when cooked with coconut milk and bay leaf.
Vista Dorado’s lineup includes plain rice as well
as varieties flavoured with geera, lemon pepper,
and even Scorpion pepper, for adventurous types.
You can also try that healthy porridge, made with
ground rice flavoured with cocoa, nutmeg, and
other spices. A small cookbook is in the works.
After the Forgenies received their government
grant, an editorial in the T&T Newsday called it
“a healthy serving of good sense, reminding us
of how our unique place in the world, our unique
history, can be leveraged as a resource to return
us to the path of economic growth.” Plus, Moruga
hill rice is delicious — a winning formula in the
ongoing campaign to make the most of indigenous
Caribbean foodways. n
48 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM