Back…

…to roots

In the midst of our oil boom that has pivoted the world’s eyes towards our offshore riches, your Eyewitness is chuffed that our just-launched “Agriculture Month” invites us to look inland again – to the fields, farms, and canals that sustained our country long before anybody spoke of the Stabroek Block!! Its theme, “Innovate, Nourish, Grow: Building a Strong and Sustainable Guyana”, offers a rather timely direction!!
Oil delivers us an extraordinary opportunity to finance development – and agriculture can help turn that opportunity into lasting livelihoods, affordable food, and a more diversified economy!! Led by Pressie – who’s put his money where his mouth is with his own high-tech farm – our Government’s stated emphasis on technology, production, agro-processing, women, and young people places these objectives firmly on the agenda!!
The thing is, our agricultural roots run deeper than the plantation, with our Indigenous Peoples cultivating food long before Dutch settlement. They, of course, subsequently established the plantation economy by developing the drainage and water-management systems through which coastal cultivation expanded!! Let’s not forget that enslaved Africans supplied the labour that made those plantations possible, followed by indentured labourers who sustained and transformed the agricultural landscape!! Going back to our roots therefore requires an honest appreciation of whose hands planted them!!
Few remember that coffee and cotton once occupied a prominent place in the colonies that became British Guiana!! Their decline and the expansion of sugar demonstrate how profoundly international markets can reshape life here. Can you believe we were once the largest coffee producer in the world – and were right up there in cotton production!! Northbrook, that became Victoria, and Den Amstel were cotton producers!! Falling prices encouraged planters to switch to sugar!!
That history carries a warning for seeing ourselves as a “petro-state”!! A commodity can bring prosperity while leaving a country exposed to prices, buyers, and decisions made elsewhere!! We’ve experienced that dependence before – even with sugar!! – so let’s use our oil revenues now to build a broader foundation!! We’ve gotta begin with water – since farming demands functioning drainage, dependable irrigation, and timely maintenance!! The Government’s investment in roads, storage, refrigeration, and processing must be seen as far-sighted!!
Yes, we have gotta innovate, but innovation should be judged by what it does for the producer. Better planting material, soil testing, weather information, appropriate machinery and drones, along with sound extension advice matter when they reduce losses and improve earnings. The Government has taken our history to mind and focused on markets!! Domestically, the newly announced weekly farmers’ market at Sophia – along with the others across the country – offers one avenue for connecting producers directly with local consumers.
Such initiatives help farmers – and households – obtain more affordable food!!

…and beyond
Beyond domestic sales, the Government’s been pushing to develop reliable supplies for the Caribbean market, beyond the 25-by-25 Initiative – with the necessary consistent quality, food-safety standards and delivery schedules. We’ve gotta appreciate that export ambition needs these disciplines as much as acreage!!
But in your Eyewitness’ estimate, returning to our roots also means making farming attractive to another generation!! With youths seeing viable business opportunities as the Government provides access to land, finance, skills, and dependable customers, they’re gonna embrace careers in cultivation, processing, logistics, and agricultural technology!! As such, the measure of success is gonna be visible beyond October – profitable farms, fewer spoilt crops, affordable nutritious food, and rural communities with a future!!
We once supplied overseas markets while those who worked its fields endured deprivation. But we now have got the opportunity to make our land serve our people more fully with the wealth beneath the seabed financing the productivity above it!!
That would lend “Innovate, Nourish, Grow” substance – and give the oil boom roots!!

…to nihilism
As your Eyewitness feared, the garrison politics that festered in Buxton in the beginning of the millennium are returning with vengeance to Vigilance-Buxton. Those demanding the GDF be deployed should remember what happened in the first go-around!!