James Sweetman MBE IEng MIAgrE

Thank you very much for the 50 year certificate; I have enjoyed very much browsing the IAgrE magazine and keeping up with the incredible developments over the half century; particularly the work towards a more sustainable future.

My student days in Agriculture in the 60s were when the approach to "Health and Safety" on farms (in my experience) was "If it doesn't kill you keep doing it";  I'm sure many of us still wake up in a cold sweat!  However, it did prepare me for an "adventurous" international career in R&D and engineering including diving for marine parks in the USA, diver/technician with New Zealand Fisheries Research, 15 years managing mechanised sugar cane harvesting sections firstly in Swaziland (Lonrho Sugar), then with B.A.I. in Somalia, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka.

In 1989 I was fortunate to be employed in The Ivory Coast by Tate and Lyle to rescue a failing procurement business for supplies of the frozen arils of Thaumatococcus daniellii for the extraction of the thaumatin protein, said to be over 2000 times sweeter than sugar by weight. 

We finally retired after doing this for 25 years when the French company Naturex felt safe enough to acquire the business following the end of various wars between 2000 to 2011.  We stayed on in Cote D'Ivoire to help establish a local man ( Zran Medo, lvoire Nature Trading ) in competition with Naturex, to supply other buyers such as NATEX UK and EPC Chem until the Covid crisis sadly stopped exports of frozen product. Of course, it was purely coincidental that these companies employed a "Sweetman".

My wife, Barbara, has been very courageous to accompany me since we moved to Swaziland in 1974 and where our two children were born. Barbara is a biologist and has helped to do considerable work on the cultivation of Thaumatococcus in rubber plantations. We are now retired in Sidmouth.  We both are on LinkedIn having published some reports concerning the cultivation of Thaumatococcus daniellii.

I am eternally grateful to the Institution without which I may not have been qualified for many opportunities.

James Anthony Sweetman MBE IEng MIAgrE