If this is October, then it must be “Agriculture Month”. And so it is, with the Ministry of Agriculture taking out full page ads in all the dailies to announce the “theme” for this month – “Exploring new production frontiers: in pursuit of climate resilience”.
There was also the obligatory month-long series of activities designed to “not only focus on the resuscitation of the agricultural sector to increase efficiency, but will target the advancement of small and medium scale farmers across the ten administrative regions.”
But what does this really mean for farmers in Guyana today? Last year, as with every other year for decades, there was also a different theme, that one being “Exploiting our Strengths; advancing agriculture and social protection”, not forgetting the month-long series of “activities” to “give life to the theme”.
This approach evidently sees agriculture as an undertaking in which a different “theme” will come to fruition within a year so as to move on to the next theme. Is this realistic?
How is “Exploiting our Strengths; advancing agriculture and social protection” related to “Exploring new production frontiers: in pursuit of climate resilience”? Exactly what was done to “advance agriculture” last year? The Government and the Minister of Agriculture announced that rice, the largest agricultural crop in Guyana, employing the largest number of workers, was a “private” enterprise and marketing the product was not the responsibility of the government.
One wonders why, in every foreign embassy and consulate – even in such a minuscule country like ours – there is an “economic desk” that promotes the products of that country. One wonders why G-20 developed the concept of “trade for aid” and exactly what our government has done to utilise funds from that initiative to market rice when it had already washed its hands of that task.
The Government also arbitrarily announced the closure of Wales Sugar Estate, West Bank Demerara, without even a single consultation with the 1700 workers or its trade unions.
They had to learn of their fate from the newspapers; and the Minister of Agriculture obdurately did not see it fit to engage the workers or the affected communities surrounding the Estate.
This year, as they were presumably crafting their theme for this year’s Agriculture Month, the Minister just as suddenly and arbitrarily announced that the government was going to convert 484 acres of canefields to growing rice.
Exactly how is government going to improve “social protection” by entering the rice industry, which cannot find markets for its present private farmers’ production when it would now be competing with them?
It is our hope that government is not giving up on the coastal agricultural “bird in the hand” in pursuit of its hinterland “bird in the bush” as adumbrated in this year’s theme. It its announcement of Agriculture Month last week it noted: “The Government of Guyana’s 2015 Manifesto has indicated development of the hinterland as a priority, with implementation of policies for development of the Intermediate Savannahs, as well as the Rupununi Savannahs. The Intermediate Savannahs have long been considered as the next frontier for the nation’s agricultural development. In this vein, the Ministry of Agriculture has aligned its work programme to realise the Intermediate Savannahs as the next agricultural centre, and has also prioritised the implementation of policies for development of the Rupununi Savannahs.”
While there is unquestionably a need to develop the intermediate and interior savannahs, as was highlighted by the Minister and his high-level team on their visit to the Rupununi during the middle of last month, the challenges presented will take huge amounts of resources – technological, human and material.
We suggest that we do not waste the hundreds of years of efforts by slaves, indentured and freemen to make the Guyana coastland among the best drained and irrigated lands on the planet. Let us consolidate these lands for Agriculture rather than building “apartments and condos” on them.
