Dear Editor,
At least 30 years ago I had publicly, in the Stabroek News’ letter columns, discussed what we’re going to do with the sugar estates when we lost the European subsidy. The exchange was between Ravi Dev and myself. I told him then, and I’m saying it now, that Guyana has, compliments of our ancestors, a 10 acre sugar cane field which is completely surrounded by water, and has been designed that way to be flooded for insect pests and irrigation, and even to allow flood fallow for 6 months, so these fields make readymade aquaculture ponds. In addition, since it is also a very heavy clay, it holds water well. And so, unlike many other places where fish farming in ponds is practiced, we will not require a geotextile liner to hold the water, which is a very expensive additional cost.
Our heavy rainfall does two things to enhance aquaculture – when it hits the water in the pond it causes more aeration, and since this oxygenated water is already coming down in high amounts, there is no need to pump in new water to release some of the polluted water caused by the metabolism of the fish/shrimp or lost to evaporation. So the heavy rainfall is an asset for us, not a liability as in sugar. In the 30 years since Dev and I exchanged those views above, aquaculture rose from being 10% of total income from all fisheries worldwide, to 51% in 2023. Meaning, that today, more fish and shrimp are farmed by mankind on land and in cages in the rivers and the oceans worldwide, than what is being caught from the wild.
Here, we have been wallowing in stupidity, wasting money, holding on to something which is dead, when we have in our hands, again, compliments of our ancestors, the opportunity of a lifetime for this country and our people. At my instigation in 2016, GuySuCo brought Dr. Claude Boyd, a tenured professor at Auburn University in the US, and a world class aquaculture expert, to tell us that if what I was seeing was right. He said yes, the feasibility study they did also said it was feasible.
Editor, farming the rivers and the oceans with cages, and the prawns in ponds on the land, has become the fastest growing industry worldwide. In the aquaculture industry, fish and prawns has grown to a USD$70 billion per year business, bigger than sugar cane. We don’t have the soil, the weather conditions, the technology to be a world class sugar producer. Mechanization of our sugar cane, given our high rainfall, our low lying, poorly drained soils has proven to be too challenging for Guyana to compete with other countries which have mechanized. But with the coming of cheaper electricity for aerating the ponds, we could then be one of the most economically and competitive aquaculture operations on this planet.
The gross income per hectare for aquaculture is 10 to 15 times greater than sugar cane cultivation. The retail price range in Guyana dollars for shrimps and prawns is between GYD 1,450.98 and GYD 2,280.11 per kilogram. Let’s use $1,800. The retail price range in Guyana dollars for sugar is between GYD 156.15 and GYD 260.24 per kilogram – let’s use $200. In Guyana, at the current low yield obtaining in the sugar industry, I am pretty sure that local yield of sugar per hectare cannot be more than 5 tonnes/hectare/annum i.e. 5,000 kg x $200 = $1 million G, compared to pond grown prawns yield range from 500 to 5,000 kg/ha, while using an even low production of 3,000KG per hectare would give a gross income of 3000 Kg/hectare x $ 1,800 per Kg = $5.4 million. And since it is possible to have two crops per year, the return could even be higher to $10.8 million hectare/annum. These numbers of yield and sale prices have been obtained from current internet sources.
All we must do is put proper personnel to run and manage it. But these same people are running and totally mismanaging GuySuCo, GPL, GWI, Traffic, Crime, and Oil! It’s dicey but as incompetent as they are, the prawns is more forgiving. The tragedy is that all the ponds are owned by the government, i.e. GuySuCo. Small scale aquaculture does not do well, the key is the feed. Many years ago in India aquaculture was a failure. They were buying US feed for 95 Rupees/kilo., then the government got their technical institute to make a feed using indigenous material. The feed cost went down to 43 Rupees per Kilo and made huge profits. Every hectare of aquaculture could employ 4 to 9 people depending on if you’re making your own feed and doing your own processing. Sugar cane work has always been seasonal, with the cropping season being approximately 30 to 33 weeks per year. Aquaculture is a 365 day per year operation.
The feasibility study I did was for approximately 1,000 hectares on the East Coast Demerara, using the abandoned LBI/Enmore sugar cane lands because it is close to the Atlantic. It’s essential to have some salinity in the water for prawns. That 1,000 hectares could, if implemented and run properly, bring in more profit than the entire 15,000 hectares those estates had in their cane cultivation and employ thousands of people more gainfully. This government needs to explain to the former East Demerara Estate workers why they could not find 1,000 hectares out of 15,000 hectares on the East Coast to employ thousands of them.
Sincerely,
Tony Vieira
