Berbice cattle farmers left in cold with nowhere to put livestock

The Mahaica-Mahaicony Abary/Agricultural Development Authority (MMA/ADA) has reissued notices to cattle farmers occupying lands at Gold Digging, Blairmont, West Bank Berbice for them to remove.

The farmers received the notices on May 20 for them to vacate the lands the same day.
With nowhere to put their livestock, the farmers are claiming that the MMA is reissuing portions of the said lands to other persons for cattle rearing – when some of them do not engage in animal farming.
Initially, the farmers were issued with a letter dated January 18, 2019 from MMA ordering them to vacate the land by February 1, 2019, and according to the notice, from that date those animal farmers would have been deemed illegal.
That letter also ordered the farmers to dismantle all erected structures and to remove their cattle from the lands.
The farmers are objecting to this move, claiming that they have been rearing cattle on the lands for more than a decade and while the MMA says it is redistributing the land legally for the purpose of cattle rearing, no offer was made to those existing farmers for occupancy.
One of the affected cattle farmers, Krisonchand David, attended a meeting with the MMA last Tuesday.
It was at that meeting that he was given the notice from the MMA. According to David, at the meeting he was told that they were squatters.
“They said all the squatters from Region Five [Mahaica-Berbice] if it is under housing or farming will have to remove and that the MMA will provide land for them,” he related.
However, no land has been issued to the legitimate farmers. The MMA has already started to distribute the lands to persons who are not cattle farmers.
“They say that they have 192 acres of land left and they will see how to share it out. We tell them that we already fence the place and clear the bush a couple of years now,” David related.
Meanwhile, efforts to contact officials at the MMA for a comment on the matter were futile.