Guyana’s agro processing sector is favourably positioned to step up way above where it is at this time. There is abundant evidence of this as reflected in the impressive transformation of what, perhaps just over a decade had been technology-less domestic kitchen operations bereft of any trace of modern equipment, and dangerously skirting the edges of some of the more basic phyto-sanitary rules, into contemporary offering of ‘high class’ products which, in many instances, can compete with the best in the world. Guyana’s relatively recent history has provided clear indications that, among working class women, particularly, agro processing is a popular pursuit, its attraction reposing in the fact that in the small business sector, it requires relatively modest financial outlay and (at the micro and small business level) affordable production-related inventory. Challenges, however, attend growth ambitions in the agro-processing sector.
Here in Guyana, for example, ambitions relating to expanding domestic markets and extending into external ones necessitate costly structural changes. Here, the transformations have to do with increasing production to take account of market growth ambitions, investing in incrementally upgrading operations to meet the needs of the expanded domestic and external markets and continuously improving phyto-sanitary and product presentation standards in order to stay abreast of the ever-rising demands of both local and external markets. Here, the challenges for local agro processors, at least most of them, are reposed in the steepness of the growth trajectory that often demands a rags to riches transformation over a relatively short period of time. There are those who would argue, too, that state support for the privately run agro processing sector, up to this time, has been nothing to write home about, the contribution of government being, for many years, limited almost entirely to providing spaces for the staging of one-off product displays and Market Days involving local agro-processed products.
More recently, the government has also sought to provide limited subsidy-type support to local agro processors seeking regional and extra-regional product display events. What has been largely responsible for the survival and, more importantly, the growth of the agro processing sector has been, mostly, the tenacity of the small operators who possessed few other means of making a living. Some of these have survived and even benefitted from impressive levels of growth, mostly through the single-handed expansion of modest (domestic) markets, and realizing growth by pursuing incremental upgrading of their operations. Some of these upgrading exercises have included ‘graduation’ from entirely manual production to operations that press some of the earliest forms of agro processing inventory into service as part of the manufacturing process. Ambitions linked to the search for greater market access also compelled agro processors to pay increasing attention to product presentation, which included, a priori, packaging and labeling and a mindfulness of national sanitary and phyto sanitary rules and regulations.
Here, the point should be made, that these ‘standard’ requirements placed pressures on the financial stamina on an agro processing sector that comprised mostly small, working class operators with limited resources. In essence, the necessity for agro processors to raise their game to meet both government regulations and consumer demand invariably demanded enormous sacrifice on the part of the business owners. The evolution of the agro processing sector has been characterized by, among other things, an elimination process driven by a survival of the fittest culture that has attached itself to the sector. Accordingly, some of the earliest of the contemporary Guyanese agro processors simply found the heat in the kitchen too culture demanding and therefore had to step out. Sober reflection on the growth of Guyana’s agro-processing sector suggests that both at home and in the Caribbean, it has made some noteworthy strides as exemplified in quite a few impressive breakthroughs on regional and United States markets.
At home, the long-standing propensity on the part of government to extract an image-building price for its ‘offerings’ to the agro processing sector has been mostly reflected in decidedly modest gestures which, up to this time, has not significantly advanced the growth of the sector specifically in terms of successes on the international market. Much of the problem here has to be with government’s historical propensity to seek to extract political mileage from even the smallest gestures. Two cases in point are, first, the claim by the Ministry of Agriculture that agro processors now have access to “12 agro-processing facilities” that have been “established in several administrative regions to date,” and that ”over 2,500 farmers, agro-processors” are currently accessing (these) “certified agro-processing facilities.” Information emanating from some of the Regions in which these new agro processing facilities have been set up, specifically in relation to their readiness for use (and the numbers of farmers currently accessing them) are, to say the least, questionable.
If there is much to be gained from the dispersal of agro processing facilities into remote communities then, surely, the ‘noise’ in the proverbial ‘market’ reflected in the setting up of these facilities, remains distant from the proverbial ‘sale.’ Here, it should not be forgotten that successive political administrations must still endure the ghosts of their respective ‘white elephants’ created in pursuit of their ‘larger than life’ ambitions.
