Dear Editor,
Years ago, I had a very good friend, Steven Correia, the General Manager of Correia Brothers poultry farms of Atkinson Field, Timehri. One Sunday, we were relaxing after some BBQ and began talking about my involvement in agriculture. He told me that the Americans had built a huge hydroponic operation i.e. the science of growing plants in nutrient solution at the back of his chicken farm which was once part of the US Atkinson field operation. Obviously, I, accompanied by Correia, went to look at the structures. What I saw there was a massive and sophisticated hydroponic installation, built in 1941, to grow greens and vegetables in addition to chicken which was part of the same installation which Correia Bros were using to grow their chickens in Guyana. In researching, I found information which is to inform this nation that now we have entered the cutting edge of agriculture, how the Americans introduced hydroponics and greenhouses in Guyana.
The hydroponic’s operation I saw at Timehri covered hundreds of square feet in a kind of terrace layout i.e. the plants presumably tomatoes, lettuce, bora, cabbage etc. were grown in terraces probably hundreds of feet long and 2 ft deep x 2 ft wide, with some sort of cover establishing a greenhouse, to keep out excessive sunlight, insects and rainfall. Clearly, they could not have allowed our huge rainfall to get into the hydroponic grow bed, since it would dilute the nutrient solution they were feeding the plants with and which would also be a good way to exclude insect pests. So, my presumption, based on science, informed me that what I was looking at, with stones and pebbles still in these 2 ft x 2 ft troughs, they were growing the plants without soil, i.e. hydroponics. I deduced that the water and nutrients were pumped in at the top of the terraces and was allowed to flow down by gravity, layer by layer, to the levels below in what is called an ebb and flow system.
This monster hydroponic layout must still be there, since what I saw was solid concrete, perhaps 3 inches thick, covering a very substantial area, perhaps even acres quite heavily grown over with bust but still there. There were perhaps 5 to 8 steppes, and very long. In my opinion, since I have built both systems before, the ebb and flow system employed would be far superior to the Nutrient Film Technique, NFT, which the Israelis are employing here in Guyana: it won’t be successful.
Editor, hydroponics and greenhouses are very capital-intensive operations, mostly employed where there is limited land space. We have hundreds of peasant farmers here, who would never be able to operate, much less build such sophisticated systems. This country needs to assist its small scale farmers with proper Drainage and Irrigation systems needed to grow crops efficiently and economically. It seems that we are either crying that there is too much rain floods, or too little water affecting food supply. These phenomena, of excessive rainfall and extreme dry conditions will happen with some frequency in this country, so we have to build and maintain a proper D&I infrastructure to help our farmers and our population with affordable food at all times.
Finally Editor, showing me a 3 acre farm financed by the Exxon oil partners to supply reliable and high quality greens for the FPSOs and Exxon, and releasing this to the media as developments in Guyana’s agricultural industry, means that someone is telling me that our local produce is not acceptable. This insults my intelligence, my patriotism and annoys me, as it should all Guyanese, especially since we are paying for them to have these privileges. Clearly, we as a nation, must be paying for half of this extravagance.
Sincerely,
Tony Vieira