Guardians of Tobago’s Food Heritage: The Farmers Preserving Our Indigenous Crops like Cassava, Pigeon Peas, Cocoa and Culinary Identity

I have always believed that food is more than something to eat. It is memory. It is inheritance. It is a quiet record of who we are and how we arrived here.

In Tobago, the stories of our people are kneaded into cassava dough, smoked into cocoa balls, and simmered slowly in a pigeon pea pot.

Whenever I speak with farmers, I feel like I’m listening to living archives, storytellers of soil and season.

This piece is a tribute to them: the guardians of Tobago’s food heritage, who continue to preserve the crops our ancestors trusted, cultivated, and carried through time.

Guardians of Tobago’s Food Heritage

Across Tobago’s hillsides, valleys, and kitchen gardens, some farmers carry more than hoes and cutlasses.

They carry history.

They carry seeds that have survived enslavement, colonization, hurricanes, droughts, and the shifting tides of modern food trends.

These farmers work not for applause, but from a deep understanding that some crops are too rooted in who we are to be allowed to disappear.

Cassava. Pigeon Peas. Cocoa.

Each one is more than a crop; each is a cultural language, a taste of identity.

Cassava: The Ancestral Bread

Cassava isn’t just a ground provision; it was once the daily bread of Indigenous peoples long before colonial contact.

Today, cassava still holds court in our kitchens: baked into bammy, grated into pone, or dried into farine that lasts through storm seasons.

A Tobago cassava farmer does not simply plant for harvest. They plant for survival stories. Cassava’s resilience mirrors our own as a people: tough skin, strong root, thriving silently through hardship.

Pigeon Peas: Pot of Community

There is something distinctly Tobago about a Christmas pot of pigeon peas seasoned just right, coconut milk slow-stirred, pimento whispering in the steam. Pigeon peas are more than legumes; they are the flavor of coming home.

Traditionally grown in backyard plots and village gardens, pigeon peas remind us that food used to be shared, not sold. Farmers preserving local pea varieties are preserving a spirit of togetherness that once defined village life.

Cocoa: The Once-Glowing Jewel

Once upon a time, Tobago was known for some of the richest cocoa fields in the Caribbean. Cocoa was livelihood, pride, and global connection.

Even now, when a farmer breaks open a pod to reveal its pearly seeds, you can feel the legacy of our ancestors who dried, fermented, and ground cocoa with disciplined hands.

Today’s small-scale cocoa farmers are not just reviving an industry. They are restoring a legacy of craftsmanship, patience, and flavor that modern convenience nearly erased.

Why This Matters

In an age where imported foods line supermarket shelves, it becomes easy to lose sight of our origins. But when we lose our traditional crops, we lose far more than food:

- We lose language.

- We lose cultural memory.

- We lose the feeling of being rooted.

The farmers who continue to plant, harvest, and protect these indigenous crops are ensuring that Tobago’s food story is not rewritten by convenience or forgotten through modernization. They remind us that heritage lives in the soil.

A Call to Honour the Guardians

Supporting these farmers isn’t just about buying local. It’s about recognizing that they are protecting who we are.

Buy from them. Learn from them. Share their stories.

Let us keep the taste of Tobago, not only in our kitchens, but in our identity.

Because heritage is not something we inherit.

It is something we preserve.