A YEAR AGO, Joana Waterman went from crunching numbers to sowing seeds.
Growing up she never had an interest in agriculture and after pursuing a degree in finance and working in the banking sector for ten years, she traded in balance sheets and calculators for boots, a garden fork, grass, and the hot sun.
Speaking to BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY at her St Thomas operation which she intends to have as a demonstration farm, her path to the sector often shunned by lots people was filled with challenges but that is what she likes.
“I didn’t leave the bank to farm. I just left the bank because, number one, I’m naturally an entrepreneur. I always had an eye for business and I believe that business is not pushed enough among our black race, the Indians have it covered but for some reason our parents are pushing us to go work for somebody else,” she said.
“The reason I left the bank is, honestly, because I was unhappy there. I felt caged, like if I could do more and it was very monotonous and repetitive. I had lots of ideas. I like to take nothing and turn it into something.”
Pointing to the bushy area close to where she operates, she recounted how she had to clear the plot she leases before she could start and is grateful for the assistance provided by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Organic Growers and Consumers Association (OGCA).
“I took it and developed it stage by stage, bit by bit. I leased it because trying to get land from Government is, as far as I am concerned, a waste of time. The process is too slow, there’s too much red tape and it just doesn’t work out.
“Obviously, when I left the bank, I needed a job to sustain myself. I did a course with the Government called the YAIP (Youth Agro-Incubator Programme) from January to June last year. It covered the basics of agriculture and it is a good initiative but it is not the best. While it teaches you valuable stuff, they don’t make a way for you to start.
“They are raising entrepreneurs and that’s it. They say come do my course but then they don’t do anything else to assist these people to get from one step to the next. You are telling us be entrepreneurs and that’s it. It’s a waste of time. You have students from the [Samuel Jackman Prescod] Polytechnic who are doing agriculture for two or two and a half years and then they’re going home and sit down for six months. That’s a waste of time . . .”
Her determination, passion and access to money combined to see the young vegetable and livestock farmer start and now she grows organic and exotic vegetables as well as rear Blackbelly sheep, chickens and ducks.
It started with the chickens and went from there. She soon joined the OGCA after realising there was a market for produce in this area.
“I said I would stay in the organic direction because the market is there and I don’t have to fight up with the other market. Then, that went from one thing to another and then I started planting at my home. I said ‘growing is really easy’. I like the science behind it, the seed turning into a massive plant. Anything that will challenge me I would do but if it’s too straightforward and I don’t have to think I don’t like it. It must be able to wow me. It must be something that I have to try to work out,” she said.
The farm runs as a business with the aim of making a profit and it helps that she is always ready to do something to minimise spoilage and costs if what she intended did not pan out. For example, one time her smaller than expected crop of cucumbers turned into cucumber and ginger juice from which there was a higher yield.
Waterman does not fit the stereotypical image of a farmer but to see her tending to the animals, checking the growth of or harvesting the crops, she is right at home on the farm. She has no intention of leaving the land and returning to the corporate sector either.
Her plan is to start the farm tours which will be opened to schools, day nurseries, camps, children and adults by July so she can demonstrate how it can be without a lot of inputs and help people see they can grow their own food. (GBM)
