New farm lands at EBB: Harvest bountiful but watermelon farmer struggles to find market

Following the opening up of land by the Agriculture Ministry on East Bank of Berbice (EBB), Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) for farmers to cultivate, many have started to harvest and it is bountiful but now creating a problem for markets.
Following a visit by President Dr Irfaan Ali to the EBB, Region Six last year, he promised that residents there would undergo massive agricultural development, including new crops and the opening of new land for cultivating rice.
Through the Agriculture Ministry, the initiative saw 75 farmers plant various crops on five acres of land that had been cleared.
The initiative by the Government is aimed at revitalising agricultural activity in the area and providing farmers with the support they need to resume cultivation.
One of those farmers is Grace Wilson of Mara Traith Village. Her farm is at Kaiwa, which is about two miles away.

She planted watermelon as the main crop on the cleared five acres and has started harvesting. She said the harvest is bountiful.
“This produce is from the five acres and we have a lot. We never expected that we would have had so much. The land produced so many and now that we have the watermelon we don’t have market for it,” Wilson pointed out.
She told this publication that it has been about one month since she and her husband have been harvesting and employing four persons.
However, while not being able to give a figure as to the amount of the fruit that would have been harvested over the past month, Wilson maintains that it was “a lot.”
“We don’t normally count to know how much normally hold in a truck but up to Tuesday we took out a truckload to New Amsterdam and we drove around and got it sold. During last week we harvested three truckloads from the field for last week alone,” she explained.
Many other farmers of EBB have also utilised a part of the five acres that was cleared for them, to cultivate watermelons. Most of them have not reached nor are near to the peak of production. Wilson said while the initiative by the Government is welcomed, it will soon become even more difficult to get their produce sold as the EBB is once again becoming the main agriculture-producing area in the region.
However, not many farmers there have ventured into large-scale vegetable production. Pumpkins, corn, plantains, and cassava are some of the more popular crops being cultivated by those farmers.
Meanwhile, Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha had said that the New Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) will assist farmers in finding markets for their produce and ensure that they get a fair price. None of the farmers contacted stated that they had reached out to the New GMC to indicate what they expected to produce and when it might be available. The farmers also noted that neither the Ministry nor the GMC had contacted them to inquire about what they had planted or how to secure markets for their produce.
Persons who may wish to make contact with the EBB farmer to purchase her plentiful watermelon can do so by telephone number 700-5499. (G4)