Young farmer, Nawaz Karim, is fast emerging as the hot pepper king of T&T and is even heating up New York and Miami with his special brand of Moruga Reds. Karim, 34, plants four acres of carefully grown peppers, most of which are exported to North American markets.
Word is, he says, buyers are well pleased with his peppers and there is a high demand for them.
“Incidentally, hot peppers from our farm in Trinidad were voted by buyers as the best in New York and Miami a couple weeks ago. Buyers there had also been importing peppers from Mexico and Costa Rica.”
Karim is the son of Nazimool Karim, who was respected around the Caribbean for his hot peppers. He is also the nephew of deceased Sham Mohammed, former host of television show, Mastana Bahar. Passionate about agriculture and hardwork, he also has a plan to bring out his own brand of pepper sauce, Aunty Jam’s, named after his deceased grandmother, Jamila Karim.
Karim, a holder of eight CXC subjects, said he turned his back on other careers for agriculture and never regretted it. “I went to collect my CXC passes in my agriculture clothes and walked away and never looked back.
“I made up my mind at a very young age what I wanted to do. Practical agriculture and nothing else.”
Agriculture has been an exciting, lucrative business for him, he said. “Agriculture is not old men in old shirts catching their tail.
“Yeah, it’s hard work but there are opportunities that come with it.”
Karim said he was obsessed with agriculture. “My whole days revolves around it,” he says. He rises around 4.30 am at his Tacarigua home, goes to his agro shop and then his Maloney farm. Several times a week, he goes to evening agriculture meetings and training sessions. He is president of the Maloney Farmers Association.
“My days closes off at 10 pm,” he said.
Telling of how many of his peppers leave T&T’s shores and end up in North American kitchens, he said: “We ship out between 200 and 300 forty-pound bags of peppers twice a week. Our aim is to increase this to between 800 and 1,200 bags.”
On his farm adjoining Piarco Airport, he grows other crops like pumpkin, tomatoes, melongene, paw paw and some sweet potatoes.
“I employ 19 permanent labourers, among them three women. I mostly manage but can do a bit of everything.” Karim said the North American tastebud has a growing interest in hot peppers and he planned to plant more of it on the 140-acre farm in Maloney he occupies.
Moruga Reds is a creation of the Caribbean Agricultural Research & Development Institute and his pepper farm is an initiative of the Agriculture Society of T&T of which he is a member. His Moruga Reds have about one quarter of the heat of Moruga Scorpions, deemed to be among the world’s hottest peppers. “The Moruga Red has a nice sting and a strong flavour, he said.
As for planting them, Karim said there were some dos and don’ts.
“We try to use more biological than chemical products in the cultivation of the peppers. I would say we are about 60 per cent biological.
“Biological products destroy harmful insects but protect the useful ones.” There is a trick in the way the peppers are harvested, as well.
“For export purposes, the peppers have to be almost totally green, about 40 per cent turning when you are picking them,” Karim said.
He said, previously, farmers had been exporting peppers produced for the local market to foreign buyers which was not going down too well with them. “North American buyers were opening bags of peppers and finding bugs and worms in them.
“My peppers are in big demand because of their quality. We grow them specifically for export and sell a small amount locally.”
Karim wants to show young people how they can turn agriculture into a success. “I don’t want to be hot pepper king forever. I want to encourage many to get into planting.
“This is how I want to contribute to my country,” he added.