It’s not just the high-priced, high-profile, well financed development projects that make an impact. Sometimes a little can mean a lot…………as is the case with the recently completed two-year Shadehouse Vegetable Production and Marketing Project for farmers drawn from areas as far-flung as Essequibo at the one extreme and the Corentyne at the other.
Designed to support the production and marketing of hydroponic vegetables, the project targeted small farmers amenable to embracing new methods of cultivation that might make their ventures more profitable.
By the time the Project Secretariat formally de-clared this phase to be at an end a few weeks ago the project was being credited with doing much more than any previous initiative of its kind to raise public awareness of shadehouse farming. More than that it allowed participants to encounter organic farming for the first time and to secure an insight into the market potential for organically grown vegetables.
Funded by the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) to the tune of US$101,500.00 the project benefitted from a US$47,500.00 counterpart contribution from the Guyana Chapter of Partners of the Americas and technical inputs from the Canada-based Caribbean Self-Reliance International (CASRI), THE Inter American Institute for Cooperation In Agriculture (IICA) and the St. Stanislaus College Farm. As far as anyone could tell the Shadehouse Project marked the largest single initiative ever undertaken locally to apply hydroponics in the agricultural sector in a manner designed to bring a measure of economic enhancement to poor rural households and otherwise disadvantaged persons through self-employment. In the end the overall cost of the project remained inside US$500,000.00 still a relatively small amount for an initiative which, in the view of the past-project evaluation left a small but important footprint on the country’s agricultural landscape.
The post-project evaluation credits the Shadehouse Project with undertaking the mobilization of human and other resources for the project, rehabilitating and constructing several shadehouses, providing both training materials and training in shadehouse design and production, promoting networking among hydroponic vegetable producers and designing marketing strategies for shadehouse produce.
The Project has also benefitted from the interest shown in it by First Lady Deolatchmie Ramoutar who has established a hydroponic shadehouse at State House and appears set to become a champion of the technology. The First Lady had attended a post-Assembly training session and, according to the evaluation report “is starting a campaign to have gardens in schools, as well as in households.”
Nor would it have hurt that the Project attracted the attention and interest of First Lady Deolatchmie Ramotar whose own farming initiative at State House suggests that she may well be lending support to agricultural projects at individual and community levels.
s having quantitatively and qualitatively over-achieved several of its major indicators within the components. The evaluation took particular note of the fact that the project was successful “in spite of somewhat under-budgeted resources and limited staff and support personnel. By its conclusion the project had cost US$345,318.00, an amount that was more than three times the original programme budget.
A quantative evaluation of the outputs of the project revealed that these far exceeded its original target of creating twenty shadehouses, establishing a total of fifty two such facilities across the targeted regions. Additionally, while the project targeted the training of seventy five farmers, seventy nine secured training in shadehouse technology while four hundred and seventy five home-based farmers received similar training rather than the originally envisaged number of 200. Additionally, the plan to develop four distinct clusters of hydroponic vegetable producers was achieved.
The deeper significance of the Shadehouse Project reposed in the fact that it had sought to learn lessons from the floods of 2005 after which a Greenhouse Vegetable Production Unit had been established at the St. Stanislaus Farm with support from IICA. The system comprises a shadehouse/greenhouse-type shed that can be built with minimal investment and basic construction skills. Elevated trays are built inside the shadehouse/greenhouse in which the vegetables are grown hydroponically in water and solutions of nutrients in prepared portions which are introduced manually at intervals.
In a sense it can be argued that the advocates of the shadehouse project were sowing their seeds in fertile soil. Across the country scores of farmers had seemingly lost the will to go back to the land after the floods of 2005 and 2006 had decimated their livelihoods. It was not that the shadehouse method was either novel or technologically advanced, it was simply that many farmers thought that we had left that behind………so to speak. In the final analysis the phobia that had been created among many farmers in the wake of the floods might have served as an added incentive to embrace the shadehouse project.
The farmers themselves as much as the end-of-project evaluation attribute the success of the project to the pioneering work which IICA had undertaken during the post-flood period in creating shadehouses in rural farming communities and at a few schools. Home-based shadehouse farmers particularly came to appreciate the role the plastic bottles played as planting containers. More than that farmers were encouraged to keep the costs of shadehouse construction at a minimum to press old boards and pieces of metal into service in the creation of frames for shadehouses. Beyond these benefits the project also yielded a number of social benefits including finding employment for out-of-school youths and creating an entrepreneurial awareness at the community level.
As part of the Shadehouse Project a twelve-month marketing and promotion campaign had been envisaged though, as it turned out, demand for shadehouse-produced vegetables far outstripped supply.
What appears to have endured, however, was the keenness on the parts of those who have been affected by the shadehouse project. The evaluation report declares that a measure of the effectiveness of the training received by the farmers reposes in “the quality of vegetable crops produced by the trainees.” The report goes on to state that “it can be reasonably concluded that learning did take place and that this improved human capacity was used to produce better food via a new technology.”
To some it may be new technology but those persons responsible for execution are stioll concerned with affordability. Up until now the project has facilitated 45 new kow-technology shadehouses and assisted in the reorientation / rehabilitation of 7 others. These initiative have been undertaken in areas where they are most needed including North Sophia, New Amsterdam, Hauraruni and Timehri.
Subsequent to the June 5 Shadehouse Assembly there has been increased public interest in the shadehouse technology and this has resulted in the training of an additional 125 persons. At least ten of them are on the way to setting up shadehouses. In addition to the shadehouses, the project has exposed 475 individuals to home-based hydroponic vegetable production. 209 of these have commenced production. Some individuals are producing exclusively for home consumption while others are producing for crops such as celery, tomato, sweet pepper and lettuce for the local market.
The post-project evaluation also takes particular note of the fact that
“hydroponics vegetable production has been embraced by women” for the reason that it is “less strenuous that traditional farming.” Attention is also drawn to what the report describes as the innovativeness of the stakeholders in the procwess of “collecting, modifying and utilizing containers which can hold the substrate, and growing plants in them with amazing results.” Additionally, the report says, “female operators have actively set about convincing other women such as their neighbors and friends to get involved.”
There is, the report says, “ a quiet small-scale agricultural revolution which is growing in momentum.”
