Dear Editor,
Judging from the facts and figures contained in your news article, ‘President unveils cost of living ease, (SN, 8.5.08), I reluctantly accept the President has done right by the Guyanese people at a time when food and energy prices around the world are on the rise.
Reluctantly, because I still ask the big picture question: Where is the President’s vision for Guyana as the breadbasket of the Caribbean? Only last week on CNN’s news ticker it was reported that Jamaica, said to be having problems with Guyana’s rice, will be using public lands to plant/grow its own rice. What’s happening to Guyana?
This ‘breadbasket of the Caribbean’ concept was being touted long before the President even knew what he wanted to become in life, but I vividly recall it being bandied about in the early to mid-seventies by the Burnham regime as part of Guyana’s national ‘Feed, Clothe and House Ourselves by 1976’ self-sufficiency drive.
Burnham, for all his faults and failings, could be credited with being way ahead of the game among developing and under-developed countries coming out of colonialism when he began emphasizing the need to replace foreign dependency with self-sufficiency.
With respect to food production, on a macro level, Burnham often cited our vast expanse of virgin arable lands capable of providing enough agricultural products and by-products to satisfy the consumption needs of Guyana and the Caribbean. On the micro level, he urged every Guyanese to have a kitchen garden and plant and grow vegetables for household consumption.
He even backed up his feed the nation vision with the formation of Gaibank, which made loans to small, medium and large-scale farmers who, even after they repaid the loans, watched as their investments continued to pay handsome dividends.
And even though he died without seeing his FCH programme fulfilled, attributable in large measure to bad political strategies, Burnham’s call over thirty years ago for Guyanese to become as self-sufficient and self-reliant as possible becomes increasingly relevant especially in the wake of today’s rising food and energy prices and unpredictable climate changes that can threaten farm lands with drought and or heavy rains.
But if Burnham was just a visionary, at least the late Cheddi Jagan ought to have been a greater visionary as far as Guyana’s agricultural potential is concerned. Unlike Burnham’s constituents who preferred public service work, Jagan’s constituents preferred the work the land, and that’s why on his return to power in 1992, he should have laid out a major economic recovery and development plan with agriculture as the major component.
No, I am not just talking expanding rice and sugar, but that and more. I am talking about opening up the hinterland to agro-based complexes via an infusion of foreign direct investments with irresistible incentives for those responding to the challenge. This would have allowed for advanced research and development, canning and packaging, storage and shipping, and aggressive marketing and sales.
By opening up our hinterland on a massive scale, we could have a back-up agricultural system inland in the event our coastal agricultural system becomes affected by floods from heavy rains or unusual high tides.
But for fifteen years of the PPP in power, and especially the last nine years of the Jagdeo presidency, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of major vision for our country’s economy, even though the potential exists to do greater and better things in the agricultural sector.
Unless Guyana can have a truly diversified agro-based economy that lives up to its humongous potential, we will continue reading of measures by government to offset rising food prices. When are we going to replace short-term thinking with long-term thinking?
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
