Even as conventional ‘high street’ businesses closed their doors having been left with little option but to ‘wait out’ the coronavirus pandemic, small businesses in the agriculture and agro-processing sectors have had to apply themselves to creative ways of keeping their enterprises afloat. Drastic revenue declines and supply chain disruptions have left them with razor thin reserves and in some instances on the verge of coming to a complete standstill.
Working these past few months almost exclusively by telephone, the Stabroek Business has been staying in touch with some of these small operators, sharing their stories and in some of the more poignant instances, their challenges.
Charity Market has become known as a landmark coastal ‘trading post’ where buyers and sellers meet. They converge there from locations as far apart as communities in Region One and in the capital, Georgetown. The fruit ‘offerings’ from farmers in the Pomeroon are, by far, among the best that the country has to offer, while consumers are known to travel from Region Five and further to purchase the high-quality cassava bread, farine and casareep brought there by the agro-processors from Moruca. Their products sold, the Moruca vendors would purchase vegetables, chicken and various other household items to take home with them.
The usually brisk Monday trading at the Charity Market is a phenomenon which the proprietor of the popular Charity WD Hotel, Restaurant, Bar and Shopping Mall, Daleep Singh, has observed for a number of years. Business at the Monday Market is inextricably linked to patronage of his own establishment. On Mondays, he says, the Charity area ‘comes alive.’
The advent of COVID-19 has radically transformed Charity. It is not just the market that is virtually deserted these days but the various neighbouring businesses who for their own patronage, rely almost entirely on the crowds that the market attracts. A telltale sign of the recent drastic reduction in trading activity, Daleep says, is the ‘no show’ by the Moruca traders over the past three weeks. Setting aside the fact that a curfew has been in place at Moruca, the reduction of the ferry service between Supenaam and Parika continues to impact negatively on the movement of agricultural produce to the Monday Charity Market on which the farmers rely heavily.
Businessman Singh is facing his own COVID-19 challenges. His mall having now been closed for a week, retention of clients running businesses inside the establishment meant that in some instances rental fees had to be reduced or waived altogether. That apart, when we spoke with him, the hotel, usually occupied variously by overseas-based Guyanese and travelling public servants, was empty and two of his employees had to be let go.
Rosamund Benn, whose Pomeroon Rose Products manufactures extra virgin coconut oil along with casareep, says that her own business is having a torrid time. Since the onset of COVID-19 her sales have dropped by 80%. Her casareep sales have vanished completely! Customarily, she sells around eighty gallons of coconut oil per month. It has taken her the past three months to sell that amount. The drop in sales, she says, has been due largely to her temporary loss of the Guyana Marketing Corporation’s Guyana Shop as an outlet. To make matters worse, the storage area run by the Women’s Network, of which she is a member, has been closed for the past three months, a circumstance that has further injured her distribution arrangements.
These days, Rosamund works twice weekly instead of the customary five days, though she enjoys the good fortune of working with family members to whom it has been easier to explain the salary cuts that she has had to implement.
On Monday she returned to the Charity Market. It was, she says, “very, very slow, almost dead.” Spending at the market was confined mostly to items of food. On Monday she sold a single bottle of Virgin Coconut Oil, Prior to the advent of COVID-19 her daily sales would amount to around $20,000.
Rudolph Wellington is the owner of R & B General Store, one of the half a dozen or so businesses located close to the airstrip at Kamarang. R&B supplies miners and other Upper Mazaruni residents with both mining requirements as well as food, clothing and household items. With the onset of COVID-19, he says, airfreight costs have jumped from $130 per pound to $138 per pound. He has opted to absorb the increased freight charges rather than increase his own prices.
With the suspension of passenger flights to the location, Rudolph was compelled to rely on ‘buyers’ in Georgetown to purchase his stocks and send them to the Upper Mazaruni as cargo. The need to rely on hired help in Georgetown to do his purchases turned out to be a considerable financial misfortune. He became a victim of a series of problems numbered amongst which were poor quality and expired goods which had to be disposed of. Further loss of patronage has resulted from the fact that the lockdown applied in villages close to the Guyana/Venezuela border, including Paruima, Arrau and Kaikan and those close to the border with Brazil including Philippi and Chinoweing meant that, for the time being at least, access to customers from those locations has been cut off.
For Diana Plowell, who owns and operates the Pleasurable Flavours establishment at 64 Amelia’s Ward, Linden, COVID-19 has brought business to a standstill. For the past month she has been awaiting a shipment of five and twelve-ounce jars from Trinidad and Tobago to do the packaging of her peppers and seasonings. With no product with which to supply her customers, including the Bounty Supermarket chain, income has dried up. As if that were not enough Diana says that some shops in Linden appear to have taken a position of not purchasing locally manufactured products during the COVID-19 pandemic. These days, she says, sales have plummeted from around $30,000 to around $5,000 per day. Currently, she sells her brand of tamarind balls, plantain chips, pepper sauce and seasonings from home though she says that returns from this pursuit are insufficient to meet her expenses. Five of her six employees are currently off the job.
Just a week ago her flagging business received a modest but welcome boost in the form of a grant from the Small Business Bureau… not the $500,000 for which she had applied. She intends to use part of that grant to reemploy two of her laid off employees and to make raw material purchases.
These days, Diana says, the closure of the Guyana Shop has also impacted on her distribution. She says that until the situation normalises she will have to pursue creative marketing avenues. She is currently using the ‘down time’ to begin a farming initiative at Moblissa on the Soesdyke/Linden Highway.
Although Sandra Craig’s SS Natural Fruit-Flavored Barbecue Sauce used to be widely distributed in parts of coastal Guyana, COVID-19 has stripped the enterprise of ninety per cent of its sales. Her attempted temporary excursion into marketing vegetables has also folded. Ever a trier, she is currently engaged in an experiment with cassava pizza and health bars. The health bars are laced with local products including honey, ginger, and cherry, among others.
Adventure Essequibo resident, Govinda Singh, owner of Roy’s Spices, says that the COVID-19 pandemic has slashed his sales by around 30%. “Whereas suppliers would usually call for new stocks about twice weekly, they are now calling twice monthly,” he says. Black pepper supplies from Brazil have also dried up on account of the border closure, Govinda adds. Local supplies are available but at a higher price. The company’s prices remain unchanged, though inevitably, profits have dipped. The movement of goods from Essequibo has also been affected by the reduced ferry service between Supenaam and Parika. One of Govinda’s regrets is that his deliveryman is now jobless. These days, he has to resort to his savings to meet wages costs and to implement workplace safety measures. An application for a grant from the Small Business Bureau is currently under consideration.
Mocha, East Bank Demerara farmer, Delvin Thompson, cultivates ground provision, plantains and cash crops and sells to a middleman and to traders at Mocha, Stabroek, and Bourda Markets. His sales at both the Stabroek and Bourda markets have declined by around 60% and he is considering ways of recovering. Some of his key customers are school vendors and the current closure of schools and drop in plantain chip sales has impacted his business. Delvin has moved to develop a delivery service that provides for customers at Mocha, Providence and Peter’s Hall (telephone number 676-5282). Purchases of a minimum of $1,000 are delivered by motor cycle. He said he looks forward to the return of the GMC’s Farmers’ Market since it has served him well.
Raeburn Jones, another Mocha farmer sells his produce at the Mocha Market. He also sells to a retailer who sells at both the Stabroek and Bourda Markets. Raeburn cultivates ground provision and plantains on a four- acre farm at Mocha. A practitioner of crop rotation, he is currently planting cassava and cash crops on his farm. He is not unaware of the coronavirus and its impact but is determined to remain focussed on sustaining his farming enterprise.
