Toka village aims to boost food security with $15M carbon credit grant

By Tassia Dickenson

The Amerindian village of Toka, located in the North Rupununi wetlands, Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo), aims to utilise its $15 million carbon credits grant to increase crop and livestock production, in an effort to boost food security for the village.
Toshao of Toka, Micah Davis, told Guyana Times the village recently planted crops outside of cassava such as rice, watermelon, and peas. He noted that the results thus far have been great and as such, a portion of the grant will be used to expand the cultivation of those crops.

“We are in the line of doing more watermelon planting right now…and cassava. Some of the farmers…are now going into the peas but what we want to do is extend on those crops because we recently discovered that the watermelon production had been doing good and some peas also, but all the years gone by we were just doing cassava alone. So those crops we want to expand on and also some peanuts. Recently also we did…an acre of rice which we’re now observing the growth and the production of that but it’s very small. If we gain a good production from that rice, we will allocate a piece of land to do more of rice farming,” Davis told this publication.
“So, with the cattle now we have a few individuals that have cattle but what we’ve invested in is some village cattle that we have the youths more controlling that, and from the years that gone by we see that there was a lot of improvement in the herd,” he added.
He explained too that they are hoping to get an excavator to clear the creeks in the village so the residents can have access to more water for their crops.
Davis explained that the village only has one drill well which supplies water for domestic purposes but the residents rely mostly on the springs at the side of the mountains to supply them with water for other uses.
“Right now, we’re using springs that are at the side of the mountains. But we have one drill well that supplies water to all most all the households in Toka. And it is very few of them that is like out of the grid, very far off, so we’re working on some pipelines to get water to their homes. But we have one drilled well that is in Toka and all the rest is from springs and hand-dug wells next to their homes.”
According to the Toshao, there are several other initiatives that the village will embark on after receiving funds.
“We also want to budget for an excavator, ranch house [and] farm fence. Those are some of the things we’re embarking on. We will be doing some cultivation in our area that we will be fencing off, and the excavator that we are purchasing is actually to dig out some more ponds that we are able to secure water, because Toka is a village that rarely has any creeks or rivers, but we mainly have some small springs that we depend on,” he explained.
This, he noted, will assist villagers during the dry season.
“So we want to go more into damming some small creeks that run down from the mountain so that we’ll be able to secure some water…during the dry season for those people that would be planting watermelon, peas, cassava, and different crops and so on,” Davis said.
He added too that with some of the funds, they are hoping to build a proper ranch house so the youths would be able to have more control of their animals as well as provide proper grazing grounds for their animals.
Toka is an Indigenous village of Macushi Amerindians populated with approximately 327 people. The main language spoken in Toka is Macushi with English as a secondary language.

Toka’s tourism product
Toka is one of the many hinterland villages that has been working to boost its tourism products. Earlier this year, the village received a total of $3.6 million from the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA). These funds will go towards completing two cabins in time for the official launch of the Toka Pottery Experience and Tours.
According to Davis, villagers are presently working on upgrading such facilities and they are hoping to be fully operational by September this year.
“Recently we got through with some funds from GTA, approximately $3.6 million dollars. So we are in the construction of the bathrooms and toilets for the cabins at the moment. The villagers are presently working on that. We had to furnish the cabin and the kitchens so we would be able to fully accommodate people. We’re looking at maybe September to fully get into operation,” Davis shared.
In a previous interview with this publication, Davis shared that Toka is one of the last remaining villages that do pottery and as such they are also hoping to construct a building to host pottery training.
Earlier this year, the GTA brought a pottery expert, Margaret Cornette, who was trained on the coast, to offer her expertise to villagers to build their pottery skills.
“Because the pottery group in the village have more knowledge of what is passed on from generation to generation but what Ms Margaret did is link that with some of the training she has from the art that she normally does from the coast,” Davis shared.
He further highlighted that though pottery is the main attraction for tourists to visit the village, they offer a wide range of other activities such as hiking, cave exploring, ranching, birding, and much more.

$4.7B distribution
In February this year, a total of 241 Amerindian communities across the country each received grants ranging from $10M to $35 million. This initiative followed the historic agreement signed with Hess Corporation for Guyana’s carbon credits in 2022, which will see the country earning US$750 million for its forest. A total of $4.7 billion (US$22.5 million), which represents 15 per cent of Hess’s payment for Guyana’s carbon credits, was disbursed in the various communities.
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo explained that a strict mechanism would be followed to ensure accountability and transparency regarding how the funds would be expended. Each community is required to create a separate bank account so the spending of the funds could be properly monitored.
Moreover, the community cannot utilise the funds until a finance committee is named and the village development plan is completed and endorsed by the village.
Jagdeo had expressed that the plans should be focused on either empowerment projects in the social sector, job creation, and/or on food security efforts.