In the 1980s and early 1990s, the local dairy industry was virtually wiped out under the PNC regime. Trade policies facilitated the importation of cheap milk powder from developed countries, and many farmers – large and small – were forced out of business. The industry has since never returned to its heydays.
The dairy industry suffered from a damaged reputation among both dairy producers and consumers as a result of previous failed cooperative and processing ventures, which struggled under a system that depended on expensive and unreliable electricity. During the PNC days, LIDCO failed after some 20 years of operation, and then the Mahaica/ Mahaicony Dairy Cooperative and Milk Plant at Dantzig failed. Then the great floods of 2005 came and buried the industry once and for all.
The latest statistics I have seen from 2014 reveals that local production of milk products in Guyana was a mere 5% of the annual demand, worth about US million. This figure is a far cry from the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Liliendaal and Versailles diary initiatives were in full force along with a national milk plant in Kingston, fulfilling almost all of the local needs, which were then worth about US million.
Funny enough, the current Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Holder, was the General Manager of the Milk Plant, and a former Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Persaud, was a cattle farmer, but yet no strategy on expanding the production of milk-related merchandises flourished under their tenure.
Upon close reflection, what is essentially needed is a set of public policies in the sector that will do the following: increase the income of the milk farmers; create the local market by using the law to squeeze the importation of milk powder and building our milk powder plant (since GPL-HELL will spoil all the liquid milk). To support such a milk powder plant, more technology will have to be imported from places like India, and inserted into the industry to catapult these farmers from subsistence farmers to milking engineers, backed by a production process that is carefully designed to meet the needs of the milk powder plant. That requires training and more training for the milk farmers and the consumers, more land for the milk farmers, enhanced promotion of the cooperative movement in the industry; and, most importantly, the injection of Government cash and other financial services’ support to kick start the regeneration process.
Some farmers told me last week that, from their understanding, milk production has dwindled even further since 2014. The Minister, in his 2017 Budget speech, did confirm their comments when he said that milk production in 2016 did decline by “19 per cent”. He attributed this decline in local production to “reduced demand”. That can mean two things: people in Guyana are consuming less milk per person, or it could mean the demand for imported powdered milk is expanding. I am told the importation of powdered milk has been flat since 2015.
This translates to more people using less milk-related products since 2015. Is it that they are finding it more challenging to buy milk and are treating such a food item as a luxury now? If that is the case, then this is a clear correlation that there is an increase in poverty for those living in the bottom half of the nation over the last 2 years.
What is critically needed is a “drink more milk” campaign in all the schools, but if you do not have enough pasteurization plants locally, how can this milk be produced? Unless, of course, you are importing the product, which defeats the entire purpose of the initiative. Thus the strategy to build a new milk plant and milk-powder plant.
Rather than spend billions of dollars on pageantry projects like the Durban Park Ponzi Scheme, that money can be better spent empowering the local farmer to feed the children of Guyana the complete meal – MILK. It is absolutely ludicrous for a nation to import milk powder all the way from New Zealand when we have so much land, both on the coast and the Intermediate Savannahs, to fulfill the entire meat and milk products’ needs of the entire Caribbean.
But can you vision Minister Holder leading off on such an agenda? Certainly not! He clearly does not have the ability to make sense around the core developmental issues, and even relating to the needs of the market and the producers. Therefore, you should not expect any better from Granger and Holder. And Guyana withers under the PNC even more today.
