Back in February of this year the Ministry of Agriculture issued a media release asserting that farmers and agro processors would “benefit from lucrative markets this year.” This, the release stated would be accomplished by virtue of what it said would be a “proactive approach to ensure farmers, agro processors and exporters are linked to the most lucrative markets.” There was no mention of just how the Ministry would go about creating those linkages, though, by September, a request to the administration to help fund participation by local agro processors, among other categories of small businesses, in one of the usually better-attended product promotion events in the hemisphere was turned down by the Ministry of Business.
That decision, would have raised questions about the seriousness of the undertaking that had been given by government back in February about local agro processors benefitting from “lucrative markets this year.”
That episode passed without much fuss though some of the agro processors who were looking forward to participating in the Florida event wondered aloud (in conversations with this newspaper which we reported on) about the dichotomy between the government’s turning down of the subsidy request and its persistent ‘talking up’ of the role of agro processing in the country’s economy.
All of this, we need to remind ourselves, followed the aforementioned February official undertaking to raise the profile of agro processing (‘Farmers, agro-processors to benefit from lucrative markets this year:’ February 21, 2022).
Across political administrations and over many years, government’s posture on the issue of better positioning agro processing to play a more central role in creating jobs and boosting the country’s production and export profiles has been constrained by what appears to be a retarded understanding of the benefits that agro processing can bring to the farmers, agro processors, the unemployed and to the country’s economy. As has been proved to be the case in other countries with economies significantly more developed than our own, agro processing, apart from boosting those countries’ GDP through the provision of new, marketable processed products has, as well, provided income and employment particularly in rural areas through strong backward linkages, created an additional export option, provided training in new skills to unskilled persons, stimulated agricultural production by creating new markets for agricultural products and provided a strong incentive for farmers to run more efficient, more productive operations. In many of these respects we in Guyana have, up until now, missed the bus.
Whatever noises the Ministry of Agriculture may make to the contrary there continues to be a question mark hanging over the Guyana Mar-keting Corporation (GMC) insofar as its ability to effectively execute what we understand to be one of its designated responsibilities, that is, the ‘overseeing’ and presumably giving some sort of direction to aspects of the operation of the country’s agro processing sector. The GMC simply does not provide a great deal of evidence that, as presently structured, it possesses the competencies necessary for the effective execution of what are, in fact, serious and weighty responsibilities. It would have been an altogether different matter if, it had been able to get anywhere near the competency level of Jamaica’s JAMPRO, for example, in terms of being a worthwhile Ambassador for the external marketing of the country’s agro produce. Truth be told, the Ministry of Agriculture has never afforded the GMC either the clout or the requisite human resources with which to do so.
Whereas the GMC ought to be suitably staffed and given the requisite autonomy to help execute the domestic and external strengthening of the agro processing sector it has, historically, remained tied to the apron strings of a Ministry of Agriculture that has always been inclined to treat the GMC as an incidental satellite rather than afford it the autonomy to perform in a meaningful substantive and, more importantly, autonomous role.
But that is not all. Should the GMC, as the perceived ‘ramrod’ for the local and external promotion of the agro processing sector, not be seen to be playing a far more assertive role in the creation of linkages with other important sectors of the economy, like the wholesale and retail sectors, both here and in the wider region, particularly at a time when the region and indeed the world as a whole are faced with serious food security concerns?
Here, there may even be significant marketing openings for our agro produce in the regional tourism industry which can be probed and hopefully exploited through a remodeled GMC that is ‘cut loose’ from a Ministry of Agriculture which, truth be told, sometimes appears to have its hands more than filled with its own more direct portfolio-related challenges.
Now much more confident in its spending power than it had previously been, the Ministry of Agriculture would appear to have embarked on a disbursement blitz, establishing agro-processing facilities across the regions in an effort to raise the national agro processing game. If this is a decidedly positive development the issue still remains as to whether the GMC, as presently structured and technically equipped, has the capacity to properly oversee the operations of the new agro processing facilities, in all of their various dimensions including, particularly, day to day operations, management and the maintenance of equipment. Here again, there is a need for us to be enlightened about the operating procedures that govern the running of these facilities.
The simple truth here is that if agro processing facilities provide value-added opportunities for farming communities whilst creating other job openings in those host communities and boosting family incomes, the operating effectiveness of the facilities will depend on the availability of the requisite technical oversight and overall management skills, matters on which, up until now, we are yet to receive any serious official assurances. It is the materialization of these facilities, alone, that appears to be making the news, as though it is only their existence that matters.
There are other baffling ‘anomalies’ too… like the promised GMC ‘extensive market research” pursuits, attended by a multi-million dollar price tag, which we have been told would have caused the agro-processing sector to become much more involved in trade fairs and exhibitions and would have featured “the use of e-marketing/e-commerce platforms” to accelerate the further growth of the sector. These tools, we were told, would have been deployed this year “to promote Guyana’s agricultural products here, across the region and internationally.”
To go further and with the year now a mere fortnight away from coming to a close, one feels that it might yet serve to salvage a modicum of the Ministry of Agriculture’s credibility if it were to provide a meaningful update on the undertaking given in February “to establish Guyana Shop Corners and create long-term linkages with private and public institutions,” the realization of which would contribute to the local market for our own agro-produce. Further, if, indeed, as the Ministry of Agriculture says, government has been “meeting with various stakeholders, farmers, middlemen, agro-processors, sellers and exporters to discuss the issues facing their particular value chain and how to support the improvement of the chain with support from the agriculture agencies,” is it not a matter of considerable public importance that the outcomes of these encounters be made public so that we can better understand just where the agro processing sector stands at this time and just where these meetings with government are going in terms of the realization of some particular goal or set of goals?
