How about trying gardening before we jump to agriculture?

Dear Editor,
Sunday’s editorial in a section of the media rightly bemoaned the unfortunate lack of interest in agriculture in Guyana, “a land of abundant agricultural resources”; such lamentations are not new, and it would not be surprising to see it repeated ad nauseam as we somehow seem to forever fail to generate the necessary interest and action at all levels of our apparently deaf, blind and blighted nation.
Nevertheless, the editorial sent me back to my primary school days at Blairmont Estate when ‘School Gardening’ was a compulsory subject (both theoretical and practical). I still vividly recall with much pride and satisfaction the first tomato I reaped from my little plot at the school garden. Since then I have never missed any opportunity to plant my own ‘kitchen garden’ and I can now boast that for as long as I lived in Guyana, I have always been virtually self-sufficient with vegetables from my own kitchen garden. (As a matter of fact, when I was a poor school teacher in New Amsterdam, I earned more from the tomatoes I planted around the residence I rented at 45 Stanleytown and sold to the then Wreford’s supermarket in New Amsterdam, than I earned as a school teacher!….and even as I progressed up the economic ladder as a human resources management professional, I have always planted my own kitchen garden).
I, therefore, commend the call on Government “to create an enabling environment…starting at primary school…so that students can see it as a viable career option”.

Sincerely,
Nowrang Persaud