Kwakwani residents form farming groups to tackle food security

Farmers of Kwakwani, Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) on Wednesday formed themselves into six organised groups intending to be registered with the Farmers’ Cooperative Societies.
This, they said, is due to the fact that food security is paramount and, in this way, accessing much-needed assistance – whether training, farm supplies and the easy access to loans or Government grants in their efforts to better meet the needs of the market – will be much easier.

The residents of the community, which once relied solely on the bauxite industry, are now transforming their yard spaces into lovely kitchen gardens while others are farming on a large-scale level to cater to the needs of the local markets in the community.
This expansion, they said, will ultimately lead to the transporting of their produce outside the sub-region to better satisfy the growing population.
The farmers would have signalled their interest to the Government in getting themselves organised, which led to two recent consecutive meetings with executive members from NAREI with the farmers in their quest to encourage all to form groups to better achieve capacity building, pooling of resources and ideas to accomplish what they desire to achieve.

National Coordinator with responsibility for farmers’ groups, Robinjurnauth Persaud, who is attached to the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI) at a recent outreach urged farmers gathered to take full advantage and to do their best since as a group, a lot more can be achieved than individually and the groups must have a vision for the community.

“If you don’t put your best, you would not achieve anything. Good better best, never let it rest, until the good becomes the better best. My charge to you is to don’t accept nothing less than the best,” Persaud charged farmers.
The Agriculture Ministry aims to build a solid working relationship with groups rather than individually since as a body, problems can be easily addressed and most importantly, farmers’ needs can be met efficiently.

Meanwhile, NAREI’s Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Pooran Seeraj, who was also present, handed over seeds and acoustic ant baits to the leaders of each group for fair distribution among themselves.
Also present was Regional Agricultural Officer Derick Collins; Regional Coordinator with responsibility for agriculture, Andrew Forsythe and other regional technical officers.