Dear Editor,
There seems to be a perpetual disconnect between our farmers and fishermen, and successive governments, and it is certainly not the farmers’ and fishermen’s fault in my humble opinion.
In the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News (Saturday, August 24, 2019), there are articles on the glut of snapper and trout in Berbice. From SN “Berbice has seen a steep decrease in snapper and trout prices due to the lack of buyers in Georgetown, according to the Chairman of the Corentyne Fisherman’s Co-op.” From KN “There are growing concerns among fishermen in Berbice about the drop in the price of fish, particularly snapper and trout.” What is incredulous about these articles is that in a leading supermarket in Georgetown, there is frozen red snapper from farrin (foreign) for sale! This is what the free market and failure of local authorities have wrought on us. This is not progress.
This is not about assigning blame or fault. I am no politician but I firmly believe that it is the job of the responsible government agencies to link fishers with domestic and export markets for the fish. Please correct me if I am wrong. Similarly, when fruits are in season they just fall off the trees and rot because we no longer have factories to can orange and grapefruit juice like when I was a school child in Guyana. I don’t remember if it was before or after 1966. We import sweet tamarind, plantain chips, dried fruits including mango, tamarind balls, canned OJ, among other items from “outside”. Why? Can we not invest in our own factories here in Guyana? Why has our Green State Development Strategy not yet led to small scale solar drying, vacuum packing and other job creating industries here in this our Dear land of Guyana, Green land of Guyana? This will not only provide employment to our youth, but we will then regain some pride in our heritage.
The US-AID funded, Carana coordinated, project on agricultural production, processing and marketing during 2005-2008 created pre-processing stations, packing sheds, cool stores, a 345 page Farmer’s Manual covering 23 topics on ground training, and a series of surveys of the potentials in overseas markets. Is that Manual still available (for free) at the Ministry of Agriculture? That was a model project concentrating, by local consensus, on 4 crops. What happened? A big fat nothing. Other countries with far lesser natural endowments have their products packing the shelves in our shops, not necessarily with better quality, but better and more informative packaging and lower prices in spite of transport costs and import duties. How can that be? Something does not add up here.
Please Ministers of Agriculture and Business and other decision makers do something. Almost every child who has written CXC in the past 20 years got grade A in the double major Agriculture Science. Employ them. Start building factories. Do something. Ask for help and expertise from the government of Cuba who have factories to can mango juice, who have extremely sophisticated factories to pasteurize milk, make cheese and yogurt. No child should be deprived of a daily glass of milk because the parents cannot afford to buy it. It is cheaper to buy so called imported and local “fruit” juice, which is basically sugar and water, which contributes to malnutrition and early childhood caries, obesity and diabetes, among other ills. I remember when Fidel sent one or two plane loads of cows to Guyana in the 1980’s, with such love that it is impossible for us to comprehend now. It is long past time for us to do better.
Yours faithfully,
Jennifer Bulkan
