Meet “Celery Queen” – Sookdevi ‘Amanda’ Kemlall

Jul 09, 2023 News

Young Entrepreneur…

By: Allyiah Allicock

Kaieteur News – While some young people may not find farming interesting or exciting, farming was all Sookdevi ‘Amanda’ Kemlall ever wanted to do, since the age of eight.

Young Entrepreneur and farmer, Sookdevi Kemlall known also as Amanda

In this week’s edition of Young Entrepreneur, we shed light on young Amanda, a mother of one who hails from the farming community of Bath Settlement, West Coast Berbice.

During a recent exclusive interview with this magazine, Amanda said what had inspired her to take up farming, was being motivated by her family from a young age.

You see Amanda comes from a background of farmers; her grandparents were farmers ever since she was little, and her mother too is a farmer. Amanda even grew up and still lives with her grandparents who did farming to bring about an income. So farming was what she was mostly exposed to, and this happened to lead her to develop that deep passion for it.

How her journey started, Amanda shared, “We had a garden at the back yard and from there we were advised that we can go and use a reserve at the backlands. So my grandfather, my uncle they went to the land which was basically bush and they cleared it. And from there we started to do farming where we planted eschallot for starters, I was like 8 or 9 years old at the time.”

There, little Amanda was even given a piece of land where she too started planting eschallot. “I used to go to school and come home and plant eschallot and it was so exciting like I didn’t wanna go to school anymore I wanted to keep planting eschallot, because I see what my grandmother had achieved with her planting, so I said to myself I can achieve this at a small age too,” she shared.

At times, she said, she would want to stay home but was not allowed to because she had to go to school. But she recalled those exciting moments coming home from school to help out on the farm.

After planting her own set of eschallot, Amanda said when it was time to reap them; she recalled reaping over 100lbs of eschallot at the time. She was proud of her work and what had made her even happier was that she had found a buyer for her produce. But shortly after, all did not go as planned because the buyer had never collected the eschallot which cause them to damage.

“From there I had given up I didn’t want to plant anymore because at that time eschallot the price was very high and I had already budgeted how much I would have earned,” she related.

Some of the produce, eschallot and celery on Amanda’s farm at Bath Settlement.

Amanda with the celeries which she had applied the Green Agro products to.

After sometime Amanda decided to get back into farming and this time she started with celery, because according to her at that time celery started to have a higher pricing. “So I started with a small amount, I started planting celery and eventually it was successful and after that my grandparents ended up giving me half of the land. So from there I started to plant celery and I’m still planting it,” she said.

When asked at what age she made the decision that farming was something she wanted to do for a living, she said it was in high school. She mentioned her celery produce were really thriving successfully and she had a feeling that she would achieve a lot if she continued.

Having started planting celery, Amanda related that over the years, one challenge she recalled facing was persons poisoning the water which would end up damaging the land. According to her, this would affect them for months from planting.

Though it was a serious challenge at the time, she never let her hardship bring her down. Little did she know, her business would take a turn for the better.

That was when she was introduced to the Sustainable Agriculture in the Caribbean (SAC) Project (SAC) through the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI) extension officers who would usually check on their farmlands.

Amanda related, having learned about this project, it was a game changer for her and her farming.

Scenes from Amanda on her farm at the backlands of Bath.

For many of you who may not know, the SAC project is being led by the World University Service of Canada (WUSC). WUSC is a Canadian non-profit organization working to create a better world for all young people. WUSC Caribbean is implementing a five-year project-the SAC Project, which is aimed at promoting climate-resilient agriculture for equitable economic growth to increase the economic prosperity of women and youth in more sustainable agricultural markets in the Caribbean.

WUSC Guyana is supporting women and youth (male/female) across Regions Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Ten within the fruits and vegetable markets.

Two things, the young woman spoke of since being a part of this project is having been introduced to Green Agro products and having been a part of the WUSC Gender and Leadership workshop.

The Green Agro Services, this publication understands is incorporating micro-nutrients into their farming regimen for the purpose of creating awareness of climate smart agriculture to increase productivity and profitability of produce, regardless of the weather.

Being the first to try the products on her celery, Amanda said the results were amazing. Having initially done a trial, Amanda explained that what she noticed with the products is that her celery ended up being reaped early than expected. Usually it would take about six to seven weeks to reap her celery but having applied the micro-nutrients into her farming; her celeries were ready to reap within three weeks. Not only that, her produce was growing extremely big.

As a result of using the Green Agro products on her celeries, Amanda was later called the “Celery Queen” because of the amount of celery she was able to reap.

“I would like to thank them (SAC project) for introducing green agro supplies to us because it has been like a year I have been using the green agro supplies and from previous reaping to now with my celery it has increased, by actually a 100 percent. Normally from my products that I use I normally used to get like 25 lbs of celery, now I get like 50lbs and over so it was really good,” she expressed.

Jason Christie and Jayla Amanda Christie, Amanda’s husband and daughter who also help out on their farm.

Speaking briefly about the workshop she attended earlier in the year, she described it as a great experience, especially because she got to learn more about farming and was able to share her own journey with others. One thing she said she was able to grasp from the event was being able to make a mint-like product to get rid of insects on her farm, which indeed worked when she tried it.

As Amanda continue to develop herself more in the local agriculture sector and be able to make a meaningful contribution to our society, she encourages everyone, especially young people to get involve in farming.

She noted for some persons, farming may seem a boring thing to do, but when you really get into it, you tend to see the benefits of being in the industry and that it opens doors for a lot of opportunities.

The young woman shared, that through farming she has been able to provide and support her family. Through farming too, Amanda and her husband were able to buy their first vehicle which was one of the big achievements for them.

She is of the view that a lot more can be done locally to help young thriving farmers in our society. One way she suggested, is in terms of farming equipment for farmers.