Weeks of sudden, sustained seasonal downpours commonly referred to as the ‘May/June’ rains continued for much of this week across the country, making clearer with each passing day the extent of the havoc that has been wrought on the agricultural sector and some of those who must depend on the sector for their livelihoods and their nourishment.
Across the country, this week, there was evidence that the rains had taken a toll on the hustle and bustle of municipal markets. Vendors were in a pensive mood, bemoaning the ‘jacked up’ prices for fruit and vegetables reaching them from farms across the country. It seemed that it had taken some time for consumers to begin to realize that the bounty that they had come to take for granted had disappeared beneath the floodwaters, gouging huge craters in fruit and vegetables supplies. In the marketplace ‘crunch time’ had come.
On the back of the rains that had dumped more water on the city over the weekend, Chintra Latchman, ‘Seasoning lady,’ the name she answers to most frequently, was brooding. When we spoke with her she said she was wondering whether, long before the rains came to an end mounting prices would wash away her savings. Chintra, like the other vendors whose lives revolve on the margins that they make on selling fruit and vegetables, was beginning to grow concerned about simply going through one day to the next, running fast to standstill, as far as trading was concerned.
This time around, official assessments have rated this year’s May/June rains as among the worst in living memory. The downpours have been as sustained as they have been damaging. It has deluged farms across the country compelling premature reaping. What could not be reaped has simply ‘gone under.’ This week the vendors in Bourda Market were not shouting their ‘bargains’ from the proverbial rooftops.
What was noticeable was that the fruit and vegetable supply connected between the farmers in Berbice and the vendors in the capital, symbolized largely by the trucks that unload their bounty from vantage points on North Road, adjacent to the Bourda Green, had dwindled dramatically in number. It is here, frequently, that some of the best early-in-the-day fruit and vegetable bargains can be had.
What obtained earlier this week as the handful of parked trucks unloaded the produce that they had brought to the capital was news that the rains had devastated the crops cultivated on the farmlands of Regions Five and Six and that the bargain prices that usually obtained for fruit and vegetables early in the mornings had disappeared beneath the floodwaters. Change would have to await repairs to the roads and dams in the mostly rice-growing areas.
Insofar as rice itself is concerned, some of the rice-milling enterprises including Nand Persaud & Company were already envisaging a shortfall in rice production, going forward. The word here is that the flood damage had thrown up monumental repair and restoration costs.
This week, much more than the previous one, long faces were contemplating fruit and vegetables, the prices of which had been significantly ‘jacked up,’ in many instances by as much as 100 per cent.
“Seasoning lady’ has been plying her trade in Bourda Market for the past ten years and had grown used to the peaks and troughs of the means by which she makes a living. When we met her earlier this week she was actually selling at a loss. She offers eschallot, pepper, celery and thyme to shoppers. The wholesale prices of these two food seasonings, she told us, had leapfrogged from $100.00 per pound to at least $1,000.00 per pound, in the space of two weeks. On Monday she was trading the two seasonings at $1,200.00 per pound. Not long into the trading day she was compelled to take her prices down to $1,000.00 per pound. At $1,200.00 the shoppers were not amused. They weren’t budging much at $1,000.00 either; so she descended further, to $800.00. That appeared to do the trick and she ‘sucked up’ her losses and began to trade. There was no place left to go.
Much of the seasonings sold in Georgetown are cultivated in Berbice…and in Berbice the land was under water.
Charity Market
At Charity Market on Monday, farmers Rosemund Benn and her husband, Rudolph, were in a grim mood. The customary hustle and bustle of the market had disappeared into a crawl of trading and there was a distinct absence of the Monday morning bustle. The Benns had come to the market primarily to sell their agro produce, condiments made from the fruit and vegetables which they cultivate.
The rains and the attendant flooding in Region Two had been severe and between the first and second weeks in June market prices had at least doubled. Some permanent crops, Rosemund said, take between three and five years to mature. After the rains, she declared, farmers would have to face a tough road ahead.
The impact of the flooding had reached the market with lightning speed. The prices of pak choi, boulanger, cucumbers, bora and the various other frequently consumed vegetables had all shot up…by at least 50%. The Benns’ farm had become submerged over the two previous weeks and the produce that they had managed to rescue from the floodwaters had all been sold out.
The grim mood of depression at Charity Market did not end with the Benns. Kissoondyal Samdass, ‘Naka,’ to his family, friends and customers, was also brooding over slowed sales and hiked prices. The Stabroek Business had spoken with Naka some weeks ago about his arrangements for purchasing fruit and vegetables for re-sale from middlemen at various locations between Berbice and the Pomeroon River. The floods had collapsed those arrangements. The middlemen had disappeared when the rains had come and some of the farmers were coming to the market themselves to sell what little they had reaped. Prices had shot up alarmingly and it was clear the vendors like ‘Naka’ would be unable to remain in business under those conditions. Naka talked mostly about the hikes in fruit prices. The price of watermelon, for example, had gone from thirty dollars to seventy dollars per pound. Oranges had jumped from $2,000.00 per bag of 100 fruit to $4,000.00 for the same quantity. The prices of bora, boulanger, ochro, cabbage and pumpkin had, as well, all, at least, doubled. Naka appeared troubled as we left him.
Anna Regina Market was the Stabroek Business’ next stop. The mood was no different there. Taysoomattie was there. She has been vending in the market for more than fifteen years. Some of her regular customers had disappeared beneath the avalanche of ‘jacked up’ prices. Some of her colleague vendors had devised a changed strategy for trading. High prices had forced them to pool their resources to make wholesale purchases; then they would simply divide what they had bought together for their separate retail ‘hustles,’ Taysoomattie couldn’t see how the vendors could continue to trade for much longer.
At Bourda Market the dramatic price hikes coupled with the absence of plenty was evident. We noted, particularly, that sweet peppers, which, not too many weeks earlier, were being retailed at $200.00 per pound had skyrocketed to $1,000.00 per pound. Boysie, our ‘go to’ sweet pepper vendor appeared in a pensive mood. The flooding had, for the time being at least, removed a fair chunk of his livelihood.
Bourda Market fruit vendor Rabbiedatt also appeared worried. The watermelon that he customarily purchases from farmers at Lethem will soon stop coming since the heavy rains have rendered sections of the road too risky to traverse. His options are farms in Berbice and the Pomeroon. Those, he says, are mostly under water. The queue of laden canters and trucks on Church Street, bordering the Market, has dwindled.
Rabbiedatt pointed to his own stall. There wasn’t much in the way of fruit and vegetables there. He said that he was relying on a rice farmer who had begun to cultivate fruit and vegetables on the dam near his rice field. He appeared hopeful rather than confident that the rice farmer would come through. Afterwards, just before we left his stall, he told us that a promise of a supply of watermelon that he had had from a farmer at Pomeroon had fallen through.
Boysie, another Bourda Market vendor, complained that he had been unable to purchase the customary volumes of vegetables that he usually did. It was, he said, “the prices” that was the issue. He customarily makes his purchases at the Stabroek and Bourda wholesale markets ‘controlled’ by farmers who come mostly from Essequibo and Berbice. Boysie was particularly concerned that sweet peppers, from which he often makes a ‘pretty penny’ had shot up to $1,000.00 per pound.
The further you move from the coast the worse it gets. If we were not able to reach as far as Region Seven, the stories of the impact of the flooding on food availability, among other things, were no less poignant.
The inclement weather in the Upper Mazaruni/Kamarang ‘neck of the woods’ has meant that transportation for the movement of cargo has shot up. Accordingly, everything in the way of fruit and vegetables that eventually reaches these communities has become more expensive. What, in some instances, are unreliable schedules for interior flights has meant that everything has become unpredictable. We received reports that much of the fruit and vegetables that eventually make it to parts of Region Seven are spoilt or suspect.
Perhaps, surprisingly, one farmer at Parika who politely requested that she remain unnamed appeared to be extracting some measure of satisfaction from the current situation. She pointed out that what the floods had done – for all its damage – was to put into perspective the value of farmers and what they produce, a virtue, she says, which is all too often ignored or altogether overlooked.
