Seemingly determined not to be entirely distracted by other more ‘eye-catching’ occurrences that have occurred in the community in recent weeks, Mocha-Arcadia Multipurpose Agricultural Cooperative Society earlier this week told the Stabroek Business will stage its widely popular Market Day on Sunday February 19.
Stabroek Business has been informed by the President of the community’s Cooperative Society that more than forty farmers from the community are expected to ‘pitch in’ to make available their customary range of produce including fruit and vegetables, agro-processed condiments, meat and ground provision.
Mocha Market Days also offer items of craft, clothing detergents and cosmetics, reflecting the keen entrepreneurial instincts of a closely knit community. What are still drainage and infrastructure anomalies impacting Mocha and other nearby communities have, in recent months, impacted on the ability to realize adequate quantities of farm produce to support the thriving Market Days for which the community had attracted a pleasing reputation with its supporters. Those challenges, Joes has told the Stabroek Business continues to intermittently impact on the farmers’ ability to generate the level of agricultural produce necessary to consistently stage a thriving Farmers’ Market.Launched more than four years ago in response to what was felt to be the need to create accessible markets for agricultural commodities produced by members of the community in order to boost their earnings, the Market has, over the time, secured the patronage of nearby communities as well as patrons from as far as Georgetown. Over the two years patronage has grown steadily, the challenges posed by the challenges of both the weather and the Coronavirus pandemic. During a recent conversation with the Stabroek Business Jones had said that during those difficult periods the some farmers had simply drifted away while others had persisted, albeit on a reduced scale.
Jones told Stabroek Business that while the recent intervention of the Ministry of Agriculture had helped to ease some of the challenges faced by the farmers, a great deal more still needed to be done to ensure that the persistence of the farmers and the contribution which they continued to make to the communities that they serve are suitably recognized and efforts made to reduce the challenges that they face.
Some farmers who are part of the Cooperative told the Stabroek Business recently that having now returned to their farms they are now targeting “the next few months” as a time line for returning to their pre-2019 production levels.
The previous Market Day back in December last year had to be abandoned in the face of incessant weekend rains.
