Generally believed to be one of the largest producers of pork along the East Coast Demerara/West Coast Berbice corridor, Vasil Wood believes that after several decades there is still much more that needs to be done to create a thriving national pork production industry. When Stabroek Business visited the Goed Intent, Mahaica plot on which both his home and his farm are located, there was clear evidence of a measure of success realised over Wood’s more than three decades in the industry.
Like other pig farmers with whom this newspaper has spoken in recent years, however, Wood remains concerned about what he says is a permanent gap between effort and reward, which local pig farmers have had to endure. The challenges, he says, are persistent and formidable, ranging from frustrating fluctuations in both the supply and price of feed to a market that remains tightly controlled, largely by middle men and restaurateurs whose returns from the sector can equal and sometimes exceed those of the pig farmers.
Just a few days prior this interview, Wood had to travel as far as Nigg on the Corentyne coast to purchase rice bran, an essential part of the diet of the pigs that he rears. Wood says it is the uncertainties associated with feed supplies coupled with the voracious appetites of pigs that is one of the