Holiday sees bumper sales on agricultural products

Un­em­ploy­ment and high prices of pro­duce are dri­ving more peo­ple to home gar­den­ing which yes­ter­day trig­gered bumper sales of seedlings, fer­tilis­er and soil for Cor­pus Christi.

Marked as a sig­nif­i­cant feast in the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar, Cor­pus Christi com­mem­o­rates the Eu­charist but tra­di­tion­al­ly it has been a day for gar­den­ing—sym­bol­is­ing re­new­al and growth.

At SS Erin Road, Debe, agro sup­pli­ers and small en­tre­pre­neurs cap­i­talised on the long week­end, tak­ing ad­van­tage of the op­por­tu­ni­ties to sell and pur­chase agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts.

Alex Ram­dath who works in the scrap iron in­dus­try, came out with 100 bags of ma­nure of­fer­ing them at $25 per bag.

“This is a good year be­cause plen­ty of peo­ple are buy­ing,” he said.

At Agro Con­cepts in Debe Junc­tion, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Cin­tra Sookraj said more youths were in­ter­est­ed in agri­cul­ture.

“We are see­ing more young peo­ple get­ting in­to agri­cul­ture be­cause of un­em­ploy­ment. This year, we saw an in­crease in on­line or­ders and we have of­fered dis­counts on agri­cul­tur­al sup­plies be­cause we un­der­stand how dif­fi­cult the econ­o­my is,” she added.

She said by grow­ing their own veg­eta­bles, fruits, and herbs, peo­ple not on­ly save mon­ey but al­so en­sure a steady sup­ply of fresh pro­duce.

Sookraj al­so en­cour­aged peo­ple to start or ex­pand their home gar­dens.

Mean­while, at Clarke Road, Pe­nal, Deb­bie Ram­sawak-Lal­man from JSR Nurs­ery said she al­so no­ticed an uptick in cus­tomers.

She and her son, Tim­o­thy Lal­man, sold seedlings and break­fast at the Clarke Rochard Recre­ation Ground.

At Lin­da’s Agro Cen­tre in Welling­ton Road, Debe man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Lin­da Har­riper­sad said gar­den­ing of­fers more than just food.

“It pro­vides a ther­a­peu­tic es­cape and a sense of ac­com­plish­ment so this is an­oth­er rea­son why many peo­ple are get­ting in­to agri­cul­ture,” Har­riper­sad said.