.TujA' 1, 1900.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
39 
THE CACAO INDUSTRY IN TRINIDAD ; 
" THOUSANDS OF ACRES OF YOUNG 
CULTIVATION." 
We gather some interesting information 
from the address of the Chairnian at a 
meeting of gentlemen interested in this 
product, ,held in the Trinidad Council 
Chamber. We extract as follows : — 
Trinidad had now froai 200,000 to 225,000 acres 
of land ia the hands of large and small proprie- 
tors. For the last ten years there has been an 
inamense quantity of lacd purchased from the 
Government and laid out for planting cacao trees. 
All ot that land is intended to be put in cacao 
cultivation and the greater portion is already covered 
with young cacao trees. Trinidad had shipped last 
year a good crop — 150,000 bags; in making out his 
figures, he had taken an average of six bags of cocoa 
■per 1,000 trees. It was well known that an acre con- 
tains only 2.50 trees; therefore it would take four acres 
for 1,000 trees, which would bring it to a bag and a half 
per acre, so that 150,000 bags [168 to 180 lb, each ?— 
Ed.J T.A.] represent the 225,000 acres stated above, 
fle had also prepared a return to show how the 
prodnction had increased and to be able to give 
reliable figures he had obtained the following from the 
Customs officers. 
In 1890 the value of cocoa exported was £531,545 ; 
1891 £439,786; in 1892 £648,103 ; in 1893 £535,055; 
in 1894 ^509.808; in 1895 £620,634 ; 18n6 £452,131 ; in 
1897 £532,123; in 1893 £705,9-56 ; in 1899 £780,000. 
The figures, as you will observe, show how rapidly 
the Cacao ludustrj' was increasing in Trinidad, and, 
taking into account the thousands of acres of young 
cultivation, which will be increasing the return every 
year (he wished to mention here chat a caca!o estate in 
full bearing gives an average of 12 bags per l,00it trees) 
there would be nothing astonishing in the near future 
— say 20 to 25 years hence— to see Trinidad export 
as much cocoa as any other large cocoa producing 
country. With the population increasing every year 
from the neighbouring islands, coupled with the assis- 
tance of cooly immigration, Trinidad must in tne very 
near future export more than Guayaquil, the largest 
country exporting cocoa, as it must be remembered 
that we still have fully one-third more land in high 
forest, good virgin soil admirably adapted for cacao 
cultivation. He would be pardoned if he made a small 
comparison in order to show the rapid progress of the 
cacao industry with what was ones the most import- 
ant industry of the island, namely sugar. He has 
already told them that the value of cocoa exported 
last year (1899) amounted £780,000 ; well, from figures 
he had been able to obtain of sugar exported in the 
same year 1899 (58,000 to 60,000 tons), the value would 
be about £730,000 to ±'750,000; therefore it is seen 
that cocoa has topped sugar by fully £25,000 to 
£30,000. If these Msures were wrong, he would be glad 
to be corrected. He only made this comparison e,i 
passant, simply wishing to show that the Cacao 
Industry had made a stride and, what was very certain 
that it would not remain at the present figures but 
would push rapidly forward. 
A discussion followed which brought out 
some interesting f;icts : — 
Mr. Rene de Verteuil, who followed the Chairman, 
said that oar agricultural industries were to be gauged 
almost entirely by the value of the exports, because the 
local consumption, both of sugar and cacao was very 
small indeed as compared with the export, and he 
thought he was safe in saying that the proportion of the 
two staples consumed in the island was very much the 
same. He was inclined to think that the Cacao In- 
dustry was more important to us here in this island 
than the Sugar Industry. It was because the Cacao 
Industry here was in the hands, chiefly of the residents 
of the island. Such a large majority of the estates 
were held by residents who were descendants of the 
old families of the island either before or after the 
apitulation, that they cousidered it a home industry 
altogether, and consequently the value of ihe produce, 
such as it was whether exported or consumed locally, 
was really our own, that was to say, that the residents 
spent the value of that industry in the island, and 
consequently contributed to a much larger extent than, 
for example, sugar, on account of the indirect tax- 
ation which the people interested in, and carrying on 
th.\t industry contributed towards the general revenue 
— because if they took, for example, say that of last 
yew, the value of the sugar exported was some £50,000 
or £60,000 below that of cocoa, they saw the only 
part of the money which had remained in the country 
was the amount which hai been spent in wages and 
salaries, because the interest paid on the capital was 
chiefly to return to England — the commission also 
went to England, and whatever profits — and he was 
sorry to say they had not been great of In te, but what- 
ever profits there had been had gone to England and 
had been spent there, whereas nearly all the value of 
the cocoa they had produced and which they could 
not estimate exactly, had been spent in the island — 
even the interest ou the capital which had worked 
those cacao estates remained in the hands of local 
capitalists because all the moneyed men here and 
those who claimed to be capitalists invested their 
money in the cscao properties of the island. Not only 
that, but, as Mr. Lsotaud had remarked, the Cacao 
Industry was an industry that was developing very 
fast in the island. The whole country was being 
opened up and he thought he was safe in saying that 
four-fifths of the land now alienated was being planted 
in cacao, so that within a very short time the value 
of cacao would considerably exceed that of sugar and 
would probably top in importance the Sugar Industry 
by as much as in past davs, the Sugar Industry topped 
the other industries of the island. It was to be borne 
in mind also that there were two classes of cacao pro- 
prietors— the larger and the smaller proprietors. The 
smaller proprietors, even more than the larger proprie- 
tors, spent the value of the cocoa they produced, in the 
island, and it was greatly due to those f mall proprie- 
tors that the trade of the island had prospered to the 
degree it had in past years; and he thought this was 
a sufiicient explanation why, whilst other colonies such 
as Demerara, Barbados and the Leeward Islands es- 
pecially, had suffered so much from the sugar crisis, 
Trinidad had been able to bear up with it without our 
revenue falling off and without, he might say, the con- 
sequences of tile great depression in the Sugar Industry. 
That alone, he considered secured for cocoa a para- 
mount place amongst the industries of Trinidad. Now, 
it might be asked whether the Cacao Industry had 
been favoured by the Government in the same way 
that the Sugar Industry had been. Evidently we could 
not expect that it could have been so, because sugar 
had been a settled industry and an important indus- 
try long before cocoa, but now that the Government 
was selling so fast the Crown lands of the colony, and 
those Crown lands were being taken up to be planted 
in cacao he thought they should look i-ound, and it 
was their duty to communicate with the West India 
Committee to the fullest extent and explain to them 
the pysitiou in that respect — that the cacao properties 
wera in the interior of the island, and that the interior 
of the island, although it had been opened up for 
many years, was still entirely void of proper means of 
communication. There were properties established 
for the last twenty-five or thirty years, to which 
there was hardly a track today, or if there was a track, 
it was a track over which you could only convey 
your produce on mule back or donkey back. Very few 
places in the interior were favoured with cart roads. 
It is true they had railways already in the country 
but with the exception of the Sangre Grande and ex- 
penditure was in excess of the revenue. He (Mr. de 
Ver Caparo) Valley railways, thev were of use 
ohieflv to the Sugar Industry. The Arima railway 
tapped some part of the eastern district, and so did 
the San Fernando railway tap part of the Montserrat, 
but that was nothing at all compared to the new dis- 
tricts to which the new lines of railway were destined. 
He thought they might arrive at some arrangement 
by which the immigration tax was to be distribute(J 
