Friday, January 29, 2010

Heading up our papaya field operations, Henry Warrington

Henry comes to Brooks Tropicals with a background in large-scale farming in the citrus industry. Henry has managed farms in South Africa, Brazil, Mexico and California. Henry’s pragmatic approach to farming has brought more efficiency to our overall papaya program.

“Papayas are different than almost any other crop,” says Warrington. “You harvest all year round. There’s never a dull moment. As the saying goes, it keeps you on your toes with some papaya growers replacing the word ‘toes’ with ‘knees’.”

“This is the first time I have farmed in Belize. It’s a great country to do so with abundant natural resources: soil, water and climate. I consider it to have the best growing conditions for sub-tropical and tropical plants,” says Warrington.

“The people are top notch, working well as team, taking pride in their work, bringing a lot of talent to the fields. They’re dedicated to exporting quality to our customers.”

“Brooks controls all aspects of growing. You can’t say that very often. This is the best quality I’ve seen since I started over two years ago. I attribute a lot of this to the ongoing research being done to control crops and enhance the fruit quality. We think we’ve hit on the right combination of agricultural practices to address climate and other variables. We had a lot of rain in December, for example, but leveraging the research Brooks has done we’re packing beautiful fruit in February.”