When you look at a map there seems to so much land available in our interior for agriculture. No…your Eyewitness isn’t talking about the 85% that’s covered with forests and mountainous to boot! But even there, the PNC had tried with Irish potatoes and onions where it’s cooler due to the higher altitudes – but that effort died stillborn like most of their other bright ideas. Like putting billions into a hydroelectric plant on the Mazaruni that only ended up giving the entire Guyana “hydro” to carry around in the form of foreign debt!!
But that hasn’t stopped succeeding governments and their agri-agencies to keep on trying – It’s our “Irish Potato” imports sthat oak up quite a chunk of the foreign currency!! It’s claimed that the transportation challenges are as insurmountable as nearby Mt Roraima! So, we have a chicken and egg question to answer on that one. In the meantime, since 2010 we know that the crops can be grown successfully!! This shouldn’t surprise us since even though it’s called “Irish Potatoes” it was found by the Europeans in Peru!! Hopefully our effort won’t pan out like the Jamaicans where their local costs on Irish potatoes are SEVERAL times the imported cost!!
We all know that the PNC had tried to cultivate cotton in the intermediate savannahs in their “Feed, House and Clothe the Nation” drive. Like most of the PNC’s ideas for development, implementation was their problem: it failed ignominiously! But this year, a private consortium of four local and one Brazilian companies launched a new effort to cultivate soya and corn to take care of our stockfeed demands. One bit of good news is that the 500 acre experiment was successful and they’re going back on an incrementally increased acreage trajectory that’s supposed to climb to 17,000 acres!!
Your Eyewitness had read that they were also experimenting with wheat but he feels they should focus on soya and corn which we KNOW are doable. As one of the partners – which had previously tried cultivating soya there decades ago – found out, the soil’s too acidic and must be neutralised by applying limestone which is alkaline. Some are sure to point out that the government is investing hundreds of millions in roads and other infrastructural improvements that will benefit the investors. But this is how it’s always been to get development going in any strategic manner: the government must facilitate!
But this raises the question of whatever happened to rice cultivation in the Rupununi – after all that effort put in by the PPP government a decade ago? Even a combine was sent in to reap the crop and make the Indigenous Peoples self-sufficient in the cereal.
Man can’t live on cassava alone!!
…and labour
Your Eyewitness ain’t an economist, but the world’s economy is what it is, he’s kinda thankful since he can’t be blamed!! After all, one of their most influential members warn us, “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”!?! And that’s basically the problem, ain’t it?? Our politicians – who decide for all of us – are still in thrall to some “defunct” economist.
Problem is, the global economy crashed since 2008 – with just a single economist among the million practitioners predicting it – and we still haven’t recovered. Yet all the politicians are yelling “Full steam ahead” as if the icebergs ahead don’t matter!! But right now your Eyewitness’ pet peeve is this: if finance, as a “factor of production” can move across borders unhindered, why can that other factor, “labour” move as freely??
Isn’t that gonna lower the cost of labour so companies don’t have to move to the last factor, “land”?? Just askin’ for a friend!!
…in politics
Jump high, or jump low, politics is about trying to get power. In a democracy that’s done by getting the majority of folks to vote for you.
Trouble is, some politicians can’t calculate what’s the “majority”!!
