Beyond subsistence farming

For generations, private farming in Guyana has been viewed through a narrow lens. The image has been one of a few acres of rice on the coast, a patch of cassava or eddoes behind the village, a small cattle pen, and vegetables destined for the nearest market. Agriculture was, for many, about survival first and profit second. It was subsistence without a commercial afterthought, even in rice, where more than three-quarters of farms are subsistence plots less than 5 acres.
That model-built communities and fed the nation, but it cannot create the prosperity that Guyana now seeks. Two decades ago, the Jagdeo Initiative was a challenge to Caricom to invest in Guyana’s agriculture to feed our region, but it was dropped. However, the current “25-by-25 plan” proposed by President Ali has set the stage for a new agricultural transformation. Our country’s oil wealth has transformed expectations in every sector.
Agriculture, perhaps more than any other traditional industry, now faces a choice: remain trapped in low-productivity practices or reinvent itself as a technologically sophisticated business capable of supplying regional and international markets.
Signs of that transition are beginning to emerge. President Irfaan Ali’s highly publicized farm along the Linden Highway has attracted both admiration and criticism. Political opponents have questioned the optics of a sitting president operating such an enterprise, while others have praised it as an example of visionary agricultural entrepreneurship. Whatever one’s political perspective, the farm represents something important. It is not another rice field or kitchen garden but a diversified, technology-driven agricultural operation incorporating livestock, aquaculture, orchards, protected cultivation, and modern irrigation. Its significance lies less in who owns it than in what it represents: agriculture conceived as an integrated commercial enterprise rather than simply another means of making ends meet.
A similar story can be found in Region Three, where a group of young professionals has established a modern poultry enterprise. These are not individuals who entered farming because they lacked alternatives. They possess university qualifications and professional careers.
Responding to a challenge by President Ali and supported as a Private-Public enterprise, they have approached poultry production as investors would approach manufacturing or information technology-using planning, data, modern housing systems, specialized feeding regimes, and business management to build a scalable enterprise. That distinction matters enormously.
With our slave and indentureship history in exploitative agricultural plantations, getting off the land was the general aspiration. Since independence, one of our greatest challenges has been convincing educated young people that agriculture could offer careers comparable in prestige and financial reward to the professions. Too often, farming was portrayed as what one did if other opportunities failed to materialise. The emergence of professionally managed agricultural enterprises begins to challenge that stereotype.
Modern agriculture is increasingly driven by science rather than tradition. Precision irrigation, improved genetics, controlled environments, artificial intelligence, satellite imagery, drones, automated feeding systems, and sophisticated supply chain management have changed what it means to be a farmer. This evolution is particularly important for Guyana because oil revenues provide something we have never before possessed in abundance-capital.
The government is providing the roads, drainage systems, farm-to-market access, electricity, etc ., that are not glamorous investments. Yet they determine whether agriculture remains a subsistence activity or becomes a globally competitive industry. Equally important is education. The farmer of tomorrow will need skills in biology, chemistry, engineering, business management, and digital technology. Our educational institutions should therefore see agriculture not as a relic of Guyana’s past but as one of its most promising high-tech industries.
The country’s future agricultural landscape should include commercial aquaculture, greenhouse vegetable production, high-value fruits, dairy processing, poultry, livestock genetics, specialty crops, agro-processing, and export-oriented food manufacturing. Success should increasingly be measured not merely by acreage cultivated but by productivity, profitability, and value added.
The farms along the Linden Highway and in Region Three suggest what that future could look like. They are reminders that Guyanese agriculture can evolve into a modern, diversified, and technology-driven sector-one capable not merely of feeding Guyana but of competing confidently in Caribbean and global markets.