Various drainage, irrigation and other development-oriented projects executed in the Mocha/Arcadia community in recent years have seriously eroded the efforts of residents of the community to sustain long-standing modest but impressive farming initiatives that have played an integral part of their lives and livelihoods over the years. What comes most readily to mind are the highly successful cultivation and marketing initiatives that the community have undertaken and the outcomes of these for the livelihoods of residents of the community as well as a marketplace where buyers would congregate on designated days to purchase greens, vegetables and poultry.
Mocha and its adventure with farming and entrepreneurship had been the subject of consistent coverage in the Stabroek Business, our reportage extending to the work of the local cooperative society, the driving force behind the farming venture and the creation of the periodic Sunday Market Days. The success of the venture reposed in the fact that farming provided, in many instances, ‘second jobs’ for residents of a working class community. Beyond that, over time, the Mocha Market had become popular enough to attract shoppers from communities along the East and West Bank Demerara and from Georgetown itself. The Mocha Market had never enjoyed the privilege of sustained success, its routine periodically interrupted by sustained downpours and floods resulting from a less than reliable drainage system and threats posed to their livestock by wild animals that occupy the backlands.
