An unlikely candidate for a prize in agriculture by the look on her

soft hands and polished nails, Shanti Drupatie Soogrim appears

to be far removed from toiling the soil.

She is articulate and stylish.

And contrary to her polished appearance, she managed to beat more than

400 of the nation’s best farmers to emerge ’Agricultural Entrepreneur

of the Year’.

At 50, the Penal farmer walked away with $150,000 in prize money at a

prize giving ceremony held at the Hilton Trinidad recently.

With confidence, she boasted: ’I am ready to change the

face of agriculture in this country.’

High Quality Seedling, a company she started several years ago, supplies 5,000 trays of 128 plants each every two to four weeks to local farmers.

She has not allowed high costs or bad weather to affect a business she built at her home at Charlo Village, Penal.

Soogrim entered the national agricultural competition when it was first introduced in 2007.

She won the Overall Seedling Production prize as well as Top County producer and Woman in Agriculture.

She has remained on top in the three categories to take the top award this year.

The competition, she said, empowered her to inspire and motivate housewives and school children to grow crops and eat healthy foods grown around their homes.

At her home business, plants are grown in discarded containers, bags and five-litre water bottles. Seated at her computer, she spends all her spare time researching seedlings and methods of cultivation before taking her place among a group of workers to plant seeds in the supply of nursery, process compost, conduct sales and advice farmers who seek out her assistance on a daily basis.

A mother of two children, Soogrim’s prize money will afford her a precision seeder machine that will allow her to expand production from 4,500 trays of plants to over 6,000.

So far only one of the seeder machines arrived in Trinidad from Miami.

She is considered one of the most successful women in agriculture and has been working as a regional training officer in seedling production conducting workshops sponsored by the European Union in Guyana and other Caribbean countries.

She turned down an offer to manage nursery production on a 50-acre farm in New Jersey, USA.

Agriculture does not prevent Soogrim from following her passions in cooking, baking and Latin dancing.

’My children Amritha, 21, and Varun, 16, enjoy my cooking and I serve my family freshly cooked meals every day,’ she said.

Husband Krish Soogrim works hand-in-hand with her and often joins her in the kitchen to bake and cook or slip away to master the steps of rhythmic dancing.

Black forest and ice box cakes are the agriculturist’s speciality.

Soogrim is a singer.

She has been imitating the voice of Lata Mangeshkar from childhood and her voice fills the air with golden melodies of the 1940s and 50s.

She laughs: ’It must be the atmosphere that makes the plants grow so well.’