After many of the country’s small and medium scale farmers and agro processors had been ‘caught cold’ by the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic in 2021 the government, at the beginning of 2022, had held out prospects of a better year last year. It had promised, among other things, more lucrative markets for farmers and agro processors, never mind the fact that some of the basic infrastructure associated with the sector had been left hamstrung by the pandemic. Fear of contracting COVID-19 had meant that the accustomed quantities of fruit and vegetables, vital raw material for the agro processing sector, had been reduced significantly. Scarcity and higher prices for raw materials meant that an agro processing sector that comprises, in large measure, small operators with fragile operating bases either folded or went, unsurprisingly, into a kind of hibernation. What also did not help were the restrictions placed on the staging of the kinds of public events like Market Days and Street Fairs which have always been relied upon as earners for the sector. All of this amounted to a kind of meltdown for agro-processing, a circumstance that resulted in very real economic hardships for mostly modest agro-processing enterprises which, over time, had become critical earners for large numbers of households across the country.
Once it seemed that 2022 might bring a meaningful rollback in the spread of the pandemic, government, in February of last year, held out a promise that farmers and agro processors would benefit from “lucrative markets” in 2022. Government, one media report in February last year declared, would have been taking a more “proactive approach” to ensure that “farmers, agro processors and exporters” were “linked to the most lucrative markets, locally, regionally and internationally.”
It was hard to see where this sudden outpouring of optimism had come from particularly given the fact that some of the basic infrastructure associated with the agro-processing sector had been, more or less, flattened by the pandemic and that some of these agro processing enterprises which, hitherto, had been operating on shoestring budgets, had now folded completely.
It might have been a different story if there were funds in the kitty to help these folded agro processing ventures. There wasn’t and here, this was a reflection of, among other things, the historical underfunding of the Small Business Bureau, which, from its inception, had never really been sufficiently financed to provide any kind of adequate buffer for a sector that comprised, for the most part, modest family businesses with wafer–thin bases. Once the post-pandemic focus on getting the agro-processing sector back on its feet started to appear on the horizon it became pretty evident that neither the sector itself, nor government, was adequately prepared for the revival.
A few uplifting things did happen, however. During last year the Government of Guyana along with those of Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and a few others, threw themselves into a public and seemingly vigorous initiative reportedly to essay a response to what was felt to be a looming food security concern.
Unsurprisingly, the initiative ‘tagged’ agro-processing as one of the engines on which the regional food security fanfare would be run. What was evident, however, was that the seeming enthusiasm of regional governments which was underpinned by the high-profile involvement of some Caribbean heads in the building of a food security framework that relied heavily on the agro-processing sector, was probably unlikely to meet with success since across the region there had, as yet, been no particularly encouraging evidence that either the agriculture or the agro-processing sector had sufficiently recovered from the pandemic. Evidence of this was to be seen in the lack of any real ‘sparkle’ in the extent of the agro-produce display here in Guyana during some of the events that were staged here for the benefit of some visiting regional Heads of Government.
It was not that the idea, seemingly hatched around this time, of a regional food terminal designed to shore up the Caribbean’s food security bona fides was a bad one. Some observers were inquiring, however, as to whether the region, in a condition of far less than complete recovery from the pandemic, was adequately poised to undertake such an initiative. Here, it is apposite to note that while, in recent months, the food security bona fides of some CARICOM member countries have since been called into question there has been no substantial reports on the pace of progress in the matter of the creation of the Food Security Terminal.
Here in Guyana, a few weeks ago, the government announced the opening of agro processing facilities in some interior and coastal locations and while this development might represent something of a signal that a revival of the agro processing sector is being contemplated, precedent dictates a measure of caution.
We need to be able to determine, for example, whether the new agro processing facilities are already fully up and running; not only that, but whether, as well, there are secure and reliable long-term linkages between the processing facilities and the respective farming communities, whether considerations that include the efficient functioning of the new ‘factories’ have been taken account of and whether there are adequate linkages between the production processes and the movement of finished product to the proper packaging and marketing stages.
If the government has been seeking, primarily through the Ministry of Agriculture, to present agro-processing in a positive light there is, up until now, no ‘hard’ evidence that the strategy is working. Agro processors have still not ‘gotten over’ government’s ill-explained decision not to help fund local participation in last October’s product-marketing event in Florida and whether the initiatives undertaken in 2022 to attempt to link the agro-processing sector to the wider regional food security undertaking were unclear. The public announcement of the establishment of food processing facilities in various parts of the country have been noted though precedent has cautioned that we await ‘delivery’ before making profound comment.
Regional and global indications that agro-processing will play an important role in ‘righting’ the food security ‘ship’ in the period ahead presents Guyana with a challenge which, one feels, it has the capacity to meet. Whether we will ‘get it right’ or not is another matter.