Dale Forde is one of a number of farmers from various areas of coastal Guyana who credit the Promotion of Regional Opportunities for Produce through Enterprises and Linkages (PROPEL) project with seeing her through some of the toughest times she has had to face.
It was the Canadian-funded project that stepped in to bring her plantain crop relief from the dark days of the Black Sigatoga disease, as it strove to realize its mandate of helping farmers in the region become more efficient and increase the value of Caribbean fresh produce, in effect, rendering them more accessible to the high value intra and extra regional markets.
PROPEL is utilizing a Cdn$100 million grant over six years. After the outbreak of Black Sigatoga, the Government of Guyana had collaborated with St Lucia to develop in an effort to fashion a broader response to the malady.
With the advent of the financing and skills brought in by PROPEL the local Ministry of Agriculture undertook an enhanced awareness-raising exercise. Additionally, coastal farmers cultivating a minimum of half of acre of plantain and banana across the coastal areas were invited to one-day training exercises in their respective communities. At those for a, they benefited from sensitization in crop husbandry and were given ‘tech packs’ containing fungicides, fertilizer and insecticide to treat the Black Sigatoga disease and to diarize the healing process.
Forde was one such farmer. She had quickly seen a marked decline in the disease on her own farm as well as increase in the size of her plantains. A healthy bunch of plantains can weigh upwards of 35 pounds compared with 28 pounds (or less) if it is reaped from a farm that has been stricken with Black Sigatoga. After she had followed the guidelines given her by the project, Forde began to harvest bunches of plantains weighing up to 40 pounds. That meant that she could return to the pursuit upon which she depended to earn a living for herself and her family.
Last Saturday Stabroek Business visited Forde at her home. She said she had grown up in the farming community of Ma Retraite, on the East Bank of the Berbice River, about 23 miles from New Amsterdam. She had been brought there from Port Kaituma in the North West District. Her mother and stepfather were both farmers and it was not difficult for Forde to slip into the role. It served its practical purpose even more after she married and needed to find an occupation to supplement the household income.
A family member had given her husband a sizeable farming plot and they had taken a decision to focus on the cultivation of plantain, pumpkin, citrus and papaw. These, over the years, had been good sellers. There is a division of labour on the farm. Forde’s husband is responsible for the manual aspect of the production process – weeding, drainage and getting water to the farm. Marketing is Forde’s responsibility.
Forde recalled the move from farming on a micro scale to a somewhat more challenging two-acre plot. The primary challenge was the fact that in farming communities like this you depend on the immediate family to provide labour. Hiring is was not an affordable option. The advantage which she enjoyed reposed in the fact that her apprenticeship days in farming had allowed her to secure a sound understanding of farming techniques, efficient crop husbandry and sound choice of crops for cultivation.
These days, Forde concentrates on plantains, intercropping with pumpkins. Both are in high demand among consumers and there is a thriving market at New Amsterdam on Fridays. Each week she reaps around 20 bunches though, sometimes, buyers ask for extra supplies.
The current price for plantains is around $40 per pound. There are overheads like transportation costs. In a farming community as small as this ownership of a truck is a rarity. Forde pays between $40 and $50 a bunch to get the plantains to market and an additional $1,000 for her return fare from the market.
Plantains are harvested mostly on Thursdays and taken to her home before the trip to the market early on Friday morning. Before she sets out for the market she must attend to her children and there are days when she would send the plantains to the market and ask the wholesaler to uplift them from the truck driver. Forde said that at the end of this taxing weekly exercise she would take home between $10,000 and $15,000, hardly what one would describe as a lucrative return. Part of Forde’s farm is being used by the PROPEL project as an experimental plot. It is a voluntary exercise and Forde is only too happy for the PROPEL presence. The experiment provides instructive lessons in environmentally sustainable farming. She has been selected as one of 18 plantain farmers who will be involved in techniques designed to realize healthier yield.
According to PROPEL functionary Marissa Lowden, the project is concerned with, among other things, the consequences of chemical use on and off farm and its implications for the long-term preservation of the Caribbean ecosystem including water, land and forest resources affected by agriculture, species, diversity and soil quality. PROPEL has collaborated with Health 2000, an agriculture inputs provider, to secure organic farming material.
Forde is just one of 85 vegetable farmers and 68 pineapple farmers from Regions Two, Three, Four, Five and Six participating in this trial.
In order to participate, the farmer must volunteer his or her farm for the trials. PROPEL will verify that the farmers are cultivating the particular crops after which the selection process takes place. The farmers are then trained in the use of the organic fertilizer. Forde’s selection was based on her farm’s fulfillment of all the requirements. Her farm’s trials, utilizing her plantain crop, will last 12 months. The trials involve two plots, one for the organically grown crop and the other for the conventionally grown crop. Forde said that her farm’s involvement in the project affords it the specialized attention which she could not otherwise afford.
For all the support which she receives from the PROPEL project, farming for Forde and her family, still presents considerable challenges. Setting aside price movements that often seriously affect family income there is the unrelenting challenge of wild animals which ravage the crops. Forde said that last year alone, she lost around 5,000 pumpkins to wild animals.
For much of this year there has been a glut on the market for pumpkins. When that happens and in the absence of an agro processing facility, the excess pumpkins are simply left on the farm or given away.
Sometimes the tangerine crop is decimated by birds.
They birds have cultivated a skill which allows them to eat the fruit whilst barely disturbing the outer skin. It is only when you pick the fruit that you discover that what you have is an outer shell. Oddly enough, Forde said, the plantain crop invariably goes unmolested by animals and birds. It is a saving grace of which she is not unmindful.
