Now more than ever before, small-scale farming and agro processing ventures are among the more prevalent pursuits in low-income communities and among poor families seeking to subsidise their incomes. The same would appear to be happening in interior communities though those communities remain disadvantaged by a lack of support associated with key considerations like moving their agricultural produce and agro-produced goods to coastal markets.
We have discussed this and other constraints from time to time and what remains to be said is that for as long as no decisive moves are made to remedy them the growth of commercial enterprise in interior communities will remain a pipe dream and sections of our Amerindian population will remain in a condition of poverty.
As an aside it is probably worth the while to point out that the evolution of business in Guyana is pointing unerringly at a rich/poor divide between multi-million-dollar investments in the construction, gold and a few other sectors and what one might call the cents and pennies’ projects that have the devil’s own job to attract financing for growth. Now, more than ever before in our history, there is evidence of that divide.
Among the support projects which have come to light and which are associated with the growth of the agricultural and agro processing sectors are the Ministry of Agriculture’s Rural Enterprise and Agricultural Development (READ) project funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the ongoing Partners of the Americas project which – according to media reports – has only recently benefited from a substantial Japanese Grant. Among the things that are known about the READ project is that it supports various types of small-scale agricultural initiatives including farming projects in Linden and pig-rearing on the East Coast/West Coast Berbice corridor. While it appears that the beneficiaries had been previously involved in farming pursuits of one kind or another, the objective of the READ support project appears to be to take them to the next level. It seems, however, that there is, at the moment, no reliable means by which to judge the extent of the progress being made by some of these READ-supported ventures as a means of properly determining whether or not the investments in these projects have been worth the while.
On the surface at least, there is evidence that the Partners of the Americas initiative has been able to generate a fairly widespread measure of interest in shade house farming. We have seen evidence of shade house produce and Partners has undertaken an initiative designed to create a measure of local demand for shade house produce. Up until now, however, it appears that supply rather than demand has been the challenge. The other issue here of course has to do with whether or not the shade house method will grow among local farmers or whether it will simply remain on the periphery.
The problem with projects of the READ and Partners nature is manifold. There is the challenge of maintaining communication links between the administrative body responsible for execution and the target group intended to benefit from the project. Where those communication links are weak the administrators tend to lose track of what is happening in the field and effective monitoring becomes compromised.
To its considerable credit, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) has remained engaged as far as providing support for modest agricultural and agro processing projects are concerned. IICA’s real strength appears to repose in its ability to spread itself thinly, to reach distances and to immerse itself in modest projects that make a big difference to small communities.
A key problem with small-scale state or private sector-supported farming and agro processing projects is a lack of monitoring capacity at the level of the support institutions. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for beneficiaries of resources made available through publicly funded projects or projects funded by international organisations to squander those resources, often through a lack of knowledge regarding just how those resources are to be managed. There are those too, who simply prey on those projects. Often, the problem reposes in the fact the administrative mechanisms for fairly large projects are wafer thin which means, of course, that monitoring capacity is limited. Over the years, lessons appear not to have been learnt from initiatives that have failed purely because of monitoring deficiencies.
Here, the point needs to be made that the recently promulgated US$5 million grant and commercial bank lending project – which, incidentally, appears to have slipped into a highly embarrassing stalled condition – will require considerable and sustained monitoring if we are to ensure that it serves its prescribed purposes, particularly those associated with job-creation. The question arises as to whether the Small Business Bureau’s monitoring responsibility might not benefit from the support of the Ministry of Agriculture which obviously has a greater outreach capacity or whether such an approach might not precipitate the kind of counter-productive turf war that can sometimes ensue among state agencies and state officials.
Up until now and whatever reasons might be advanced for the failure of this project to kick into gear, it has to be said that in circumstances where several hundred people have been waiting for many months for it to make a start, the handling of the delay has been altogether unacceptable from a public image standpoint. One might even say that the behaviour of the public officials in this instance reflects an unmindfulness of the fact that it has taken ages to create an appropriate mechanism to provide financial support for small business development and now that it appears that there is one, the engine simply refuses to start.
One wonders whether a case does not exist for some sort of presidential intervention – since it was the President who launched the project in October last year – to get the two ministers closest to the project to get the show on the road.
Small scale farming, particularly shade house farming, and kitchen venture agro processing have become increasingly popular second-income pursuits even among middle income wage earners. Beyond that these pursuits may even be preferred to paid employment, particularly poorly paid public sector employment. It has been observed too that shade house farming has attracted the interest of university graduates and other professionals both as a habit and as a means of increasing their earnings. Accordingly, there would appear to be every reason for government to support initiatives like the Partners of the Americas Project since the more people that become involved in full-time shade house farming the fewer the numbers that will be seeking public sector jobs.
Another useful role for shade house farming has to do with its potential as a tool for popularising urban agriculture; its advantages in this regard reposing in the fact that it is not a physically strenuous pursuit and moreover, that it can be pursued in relatively small spaces. There is therefore something to be said for aggressive government support for shade house farming and for the Partners of the Americas project
