-as part of gov’t move to boost production
The Ministry of Agriculture is engaged in a $25M initiative to rehabilitate the main access road to St Cuthbert’s Mission from the Linden highway as it takes steps to boost production in the area.
Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud, in his address at a function held in the village to observe World Food Day, said the initiative will be undertaken in collaboration with the Amerindian Affairs Ministry. The ministries will be collaborating on a project to convert areas not previously used for agriculture production into food-producing plots, a press release from the Government Information Agency (GINA) said.
Minister of Amerindian Affairs, Pauline Sukhai boasted that Guyana is currently food secure and that government will continue to maintain this status. She noted that many countries have suffered natural disasters which have taken a toll on their productivity. Sukhai said “The world needs to pay more attention to ensuring that we can guarantee our food security at the international level.”
In addition, Persaud indicated that government has succeeded in eradicating hunger, thus making food affordable, despite the constraints oftentimes faced with climate change and Guyana’s vulnerability to flooding due to its low-lying coastland. In acknowledging the need for the country to become more self-sufficient, he said farmers must recognise and confront the challenges and exploit the full potential of the community. He told the community that the only way they can boost productivity, is by cultivating more acreage.
“The best days for Guyana as it relates to agriculture are not in the past but in the future. We believe that we can tap that vast potential because if we look at our land mass in terms of fertile soil we have close to 250,000 acres without deforestation, under cultivation,” he said. Persaud said few countries can boast of that fact and despite the adverse effects of climate change, Guyana is in a position to be a significant provider of food and in recognition of that fact, government continues to invest in the sector.
To date, $9B has been invested in the sector, he said, to decrease the number of hungry people.
Food and Agriculture Organisation representative Dr Lystra Fletcher-Paul, in reading FAO Director General Dr Jacques Diouf’s ‘World Food Day’ message said that due to decades of silent neglect in global agriculture production, the 2009 economic crisis, coupled with soaring food prices, caused the hunger threshold to breach the one billion mark.
The FAO has since launched a petition to reflect on the moral outrage of the situation. “This is for persons to sign the petition and to work together to amplify the message that society has to take special care so that no one goes hungry, and to date over one million people have signed and the project is continuing,” she said.
Dr Fletcher-Paul said this year’s theme “United against Hunger” highlights the need to launch a new green revolution noting that the task of increasing food production is a job for everyone. She pointed out that there will have to be a 70 per cent increase in food production to satisfy the needs of nine billion people by 2050.
This means that farmers will have to get greater yields from the limited farms acreages they till.
Drip irrigation system
After the ceremony, ministers Persaud and Sukhai commissioned a Drip Irrigation System in the area. The area, which is mostly sandy often experiences water shortages as such the drip irrigation system was installed. This method allows for the slow application of water directly to the plant’s root zone so that water is not wasted on non-growth areas. It helps to retain soil moisture as well.
GINA said the roster of activities in the area also included an exhibition from agencies such as the New Guyana Marketing Corpora-tion, National Agricultural Research Institute and the Guyana Forestry Commission.