With the prices of fruit and vegetables still cutting a swathe through ‘tight’ budgets at Municipal Markets in large swathes of coastal Guyana, the considerable numbers of shoppers who put in their appearances at last Sunday’s Farmers’ Market, at the Police Sports Club Ground, Eve Leary must have been pleased with what could be a reduction to their ‘budgetary tensions’. With Christmas only having just come and gone, the event appeared to be an intervention by the Ministry of Agriculture designed to ease what had become a painful price ‘pressure’ which the municipal market vendors have been applying, If the response of the vendors has been that they are simply ‘passing’ the price gouging ‘buck,’ last Sunday’s early start to the Farmers Market ‘season’ appeared to suggest the Ministry of Agriculture may have opted to make an early remedial intervention.
While the fact that last Sunday’s event appeared to reflect the Ministry’s awareness of the situation we are still going to have to wait and see whether periodic reduced farmers’ prices alone can remove the ‘high price’ pressure so that while we are told that last Sunday’s Market Day marks the start of what will be an ongoing series of such events, it has to be assumed that the Ministry of Agriculture will, as well, be pressing its 2024 multi-billion dollar budget into service to ease the price pressures on consumers. Over time, Farmers’ Markets have been playing an important role in bringing pockets of relief to hard-pressed consumers, ensuring that locally produced greens and vegetables as well as agro-processed commodities are available to consumers at prices that ‘fit’ their purses. These pursuits are hinged to the wider objective of regional food security, a preoccupation which the Caribbean is grappling with at this time.
Here in Guyana, the whole idea behind Market Days is to provide consumers with short-term shifts from the pressures of what, all too frequently, are ‘punishing’ market prices. Here, there is much greater room for haggling. What Farmers Markets do, as well, is establish direct and, frequently, lasting linkages with farmers. As a spectacle in its own right, last Sunday’s Market Day was decidedly pleasing. Some of the farmers, we learnt, had moved their produce to Eve Leary from areas as far as Mahaica, parts of Berbice and Parika Back Dam. That, in itself, sent messages about energetic producers earnestly seeking what they perceived to be potentially worthwhile markets.
‘Doing business’ apart, the occasion afforded opportunity for much wider interaction with representatives of some of the strategically important Departments in the Ministry of Agriculture as well as representatives of the President’s Shade House Project. The Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC), which is charged with facilitating some services for the farming and agro processing communities, were also represented at last Sunday’s Farmers’ Market event. On Sunday, too, the GMC ‘set up stall’ at Eve Leary, offering farm produce including Chicken, Pork, and Beef, offering ‘bargains’ that ducked below the accustomed market prices. The Ministry of Agriculture’s Sea Foods Division, meanwhile, showcased and sold Fish, Shrimp and other sea foods as part of the event.
On Sunday, at Eve Leary, there was evidence that producers appeared to have been encouraged to assume a pricing strategy that took account of affording consumers to ‘exhale’ from what has been an extended regimen of exacting food prices. Some of the ‘standout’ price cuts appeared to target eddo, pumpkin and carilla and celery. The prices of all of these ‘staple’ foods for Guyanese households were ‘cut down to size’ on Sunday. The experience provided a comforting (even if limited and fleeting) change from the protracted price pressures that have been in place in conventional marketplaces for far too long.
