Theobroma cacao is the seed that saved her life, said Sarah Bharath. Now she dedicates herself to teaching others what she learned. How Bharath became a cocoa consultant and what she has learned from seeds: this is her story, as told to Pat Ganase.

I keep a lab/office in my parents’ home in central, where I was born and grew up with two younger brothers. My dad was a teacher, and we went to primary school where he was teaching, Palmiste Government Primary just beyond Longdenville. My mother was the teacher at home. I moved to St Joseph’s Convent in St Joseph, then went to UWI (University of the West Indies), St Augustine.

For my undergrad, I studied plant sciences. Prof Julian Duncan and Dr Ralph Phelps made me fall in love with plant science; theirs was an era of true scholarship, one that required you to read for your degree. I am a voracious reader, cultivated by my parents.

“A cow should graze where it’s tied.” That’s what a professor told me when I was deep in a study of hot peppers for the MPhil while working at the Cocoa Research Unit (CRU now CRC).

I started as a technician in pathology – experiments to find cacao plants tolerant to black pod disease – this had international relevance.

Dr Butler was head of CRU at the time. I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to work in every department of CRU, from 1998-2011, ending in post-harvest processing, fermentation, drying and quality assessments.

All the while, I was pursuing the MPhil in plant sciences, an intense study on hot peppers.

I ate my way through peppers, which was a process, not a project.

[caption id="attachment_1044540" align="alignnone" width="602"] One of the cacao farmer’s pleasures: consuming pulp fresh from the tree. - Photo by Charlene Kent[/caption]

For two years of that work, I was depressed, sitting in a greenhouse crying for hours, questioning my life choices. Near the end of my time with CRU, I was sent to France to learn statistical techniques for work on some CRU project. There were also many papers in the library that I wanted to read which were in French or Portuguese.

So I gave myself an expensive “carrot” to complete: I signed up for French immersive in the south of France. I paid for it in full.

The day I walked in my thesis, July 26, 2011, I headed to the south of France for seven months. The relief and disbelief were immeasurable.

Agriculture in any language

When I entered my first class in France, I realised this was the best decision of my life. It allowed me to purge the grad student experience and unpack a lot of trauma.

Then I applied to the Institute for Mediterranean Agriculture. They could not believe that I came so far to pay money to learn Mediterranean agriculture, so I got a lot of discounts. I was determined to not just be proficient in French but in agriculture and French.

I came back to Trinidad and reapplied to CRU. There was no job for me at CRU and I kept trying to find work. It was a desperate time until I realised I could not even sell soap! Two Martiniquan women who came