Two successive years of flooding in Guyana’s coastal areas – in 2005 and 2006 – and the attendant consequences of scarcity of fresh fruit and vegetables and accompanying price rises compelled Region Ten to seriously contemplate its vulnerability to agricultural ‘imports’ and the weakness of its food security infrastructure.
The response of the region was to commission a study of its agricultural potential aimed at determining the extent to which it could provide for its own food needs.
All this, of course, took place long before the current global food crisis had emerged. At that time, Region Ten was concerned about the vulnerability to flooding in the country’s agricultural areas and the likelihood that its residents might suffer even more in the event that there was any repetition of the floods of those two years.
The information that we have received and which we have reported in this issue of the Stabroek Business suggests that Region Ten has made some advances in the area of food security. The figure of 70 per cent self-sufficiency in some fresh fruit and vegetables and poultry is certainly noteworthy, given the fact that while there has always been agricultural activity in Region Ten, Linden and its environs have traditionally been known for mining rather than farming.
The current accelerated focus on agriculture in this region has also derived in large measure from the need to pursue alternative forms of economic activity in the wake of the decline of the bauxite industry as its major employer. This, of course, involves an attitudinal shift among those residents of the region who are either becoming involved in agricultural pursuits for the first time, or else, are seeking to move from subsistence to commercial farming.
The Region Ten experience – even given the fact that the results are still limited at this time – assumes a particular significance in the light of the current call by the government for a wider grow more food effort as a response to greater global demand on diminishing food stocks and rising prices. In much the same way, for example, that some residents of Region Ten have had to undergo some degree of attitudinal change in order to address their minds to farming, so too will other communities – particularly urban communities – across the country.
Some weeks ago President Jagdeo himself alluded to the fact that traditionally every Guyanese is not cut out – so to speak – for farming. Necessity, however, is the mother of invention, and the circumstances certainly demand a degree of inventiveness and flexibility on the part of the country as a whole.
One of the significant things about the Region Ten initiative is that it was characterized by practical measures on the part of LEAP, LEAF and the regional administration to support the efforts of the Region Ten Farmers Association and the various other small and medium sized-farmers in that region; and while the upshot has not been what one might term a green revolution in the region, it is more than a little encouraging to note that Region Ten has actually reduced its dependence on fruits, vegetables and poultry from elsewhere and is even eyeing the possibility of export markets for peppers.
While we make no attempt to magnify the example of Region Ten beyond what its agricultural exploits have actually realized, it is entirely conceivable that the examples that inhere in those outcomes can perhaps be duplicated elsewhere. In this regard one of the biggest challenges facing the government is that of backing its countrywide grow more food media blitz with practical measures that target – particularly though not exclusively – urban communities where people have grown used to buying rather than planting food.
It would make little sense, for example, to simply bombard those sections of the population with grow-more-food media messages without providing practical support in the forms of basic guidance in subsistence and small-scale agriculture, market support – which the government has already undertaken to help provide – and loans for investment in infrastructure and other inputs. In this context the question arises as to whether, in the prevailing circumstances, the commercial banking sector can be persuaded to buy in to the grow more food campaign by adopting a more flexible lending policy particularly for small and medium-scale agricultural projects.
Like Region Ten in the wake of the floods of 2005 and 2006, the wider community now seems to have little choice but to get with the farming habit if we are to be spared the worst excesses of rising food prices since while there are those whose incomes will probably allow them to cope with price rises, the majority of Guyanese may well find themselves with no other option than to impose their own import substitution regimes and to focus instead on increased consumption of cheaper, locally produced foods.
And while the Region Ten Farmers Association says that it is determined to press on with moving the region even closer to self-sufficiency, the farmers say that they need government’s support in speeding up land leases in areas like Dallawalla where there are more lands that can be bought under cultivation. The Association says that the leases are important not only to legitimize the farmers’ agricultural pursuits but also to enable them to access loans at commercial banks.
Whatever the bureaucratic and other obstacles to hastening those leases the state entities involved may wish to address them in the context of the urgency that the situation demands.
