There is a persuasive argument for asserting that the encouraging growth of the country’s agro-processing sector over a period of a decade or more has been due, overwhelmingly, to the diligence and inventiveness of local agro processors, mostly women with little or no formal training in the discipline, and even without the profusion of technology that has attended the incremental global growth of the sector.
Here in Guyana, the success of the sector can be attributed, overwhelmingly, to the creativity and the doggedness of the contemporary Agro Processors whose skills are either self-taught, or else, handed down through generations, and benefitting from gradual growth through trial and error by women whose primary role, as home makers and income-earners, invariably, left them no choice. The markets that emerged here in Guyana from the earliest excursions into the ‘manufacture’ of agro-processed goods, emerged largely from neighbourhood patronage and from the street corner stands. Here, the target markets were the ‘sweet tooth culture’ to be found in closely knit, poor communities and from the need for parents to find snack foods for their school-aged children.