It has now been two years since the initiative to produce soya and corn in our intermediate savannahs was launched by the government of Guyana and several private sector companies. To date, the government has invested more than $1Billion in “infrastructural development” for the project which consists of roads, a wharf and drying and storage facilities. The Guyana savannahs are little known to most Guyanese who live on our coastlands but they have captivated the imagination of all governments since independence as one of our untapped frontiers.Savannahs are the tropical equivalent of the temperate zone prairies of North America and the steppes of Eurasia – vast flat or undulating grasslands. More precisely they have been defined as “a mixed woodland-grassland ecosystem characterized by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of grasses.” We have two sets of savannahs in Guyana. First are the “Intermediate Savannahs” in Region 10, which cover approximately 2000 square miles or 5000,000 hectares. It consists of 70 per cent forest and 25 per cent of savannah lands and comprises five discrete areas; the Kimbia/Ebini Savannah (East of the Berbice River); the Wiruni Savannah (West of the Berbice River); the Ituni/Tacama Savannah (West of the Berbice River); the Kibilibiri Savannah (West of the Berbice River) and the Eberoabo Savannah (West of the Berbice River). The second are found in the Rupununi (north and south) and are much larger at 6000 square miles. These are vast expanses of land into which each of the CariCom islands would easily fit.
Directly after independence the PNC administration attempted to open up the intermediate savannahs for cultivation. The first effort was the Global Agri Kibilibiri grain project, which embarked on large- scale production of maize, sorghum, soyabean and black-eye pea. Approximately 1400 acres was put under cultivation during which time ownership and management of the project was derogated to the state owned Guyana Agricultural Products Corporation, which continued farming until 1978 and then collapsed. By then the government had moved on with a combination of state effort through the creation of the Guyana National Service (GNS) in 1974 and later private enterprise. Unfortunately, all these efforts also failed.
Since then, there have been regular attempts in every decade to creating a sustainable model for agricultural development of the savannahs to make Guyana into the “Breadbasket of the Caribbean”, to no avail. But at long last it appears that we are on the way to create a viable model to realize the potential of the intermediate savannahs. In 2021 a trial crop of 250 acres of soya was successfully planted and reaped by the consortium to be used to satisfy the needs of the livestock industry that imports some US$80M of feedstock annually. While the yield was less than optimum it revealed the constraints that had to be addressed. Prime among these was the need to neutralize the acidic soil using limestone which had to be imported from the Dominical Republic. For the doubled acreage second crop in 2022, in which corn was also included, the amount of limestone shipped in was insufficient to satisfy the needs but more experience was gleaned.
The initiative exemplifies the kind of risk-taking that is demanded for entrepreneurship but is not fully appreciated by the opposition who glibly talk of “development” but never demanded the patience to create the necessary conditions for success. To date the consortium of five Guyanese companies have already ploughed in more than half a billion dollars without any profits earned. But with the commitment of the government towards Guyana’s larger developmental trajectory they have girded their loins for the long haul – which is to satisfy the needs on the local livestock sector and also that of Caricom.
At long last we appear to have hit on the right combination of private and public initiative that create the successful entrepreneurial state model.
