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The Govt. has kept Guyana as the “Bread basket of the Caribbean”

Jul 03, 2008 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
As a farmer with 30 years’ experience in practical farming, and former Vice-President of the Guyana Rice Producers Association (GRPA), I have always recognised the potential Guyana has to produce and feed the nation, as well as to export.

We have never lost the good name of being the “Bread Basket of the Caribbean,” when we recall, in the early thirties, when the Islanders, some speaking Spanish, French or Patois, came and occupied lands in various riverain areas.

The revolution of farming became noticeable when the PPP Government established the Black Bush, Bonasika and Tapakuma Schemes.

By 1957, farmers invaded the islands of the Essequibo River, being Baboon Hole, Berisibali, Liberty Island, Hog Island and Troolie Island. Farm production then warranted buying centres in several areas, inclusive of Kumaka in the North West District.

While the Canals Polder produced pineapples, citrus, and coffee, the North West District dominated the production of corn, ginger, coffee, citrus and tumeric.

Pomeroon and the Essequibo Islands’ production was so high that Norbert Alphonso had licence to export farm produce to the Caribbean.

As well as the PNC in the late sixties, recognising the surplus in food, said, “No man go to bed hungry, free cassava bread and milk,” all because Leguan, Mahaicony and Mahaica had reached their apex of milk production.

The PNC established some infrastructure to facilitate agriculture: the cheese plant, the ham factory, the cassava factories and the fish complexes; but they were not sustainable, and even what the PPP left in 1964, all agricultural schemes went into terminal decline, thus destroying a culture in farming which took time to remould.

Most of the PNC-made infrastructure was renovated and made workable again by the PPP-Civic Government.
However, the achievement of rebuilding agriculture by the present Government is remarkable, knowing that IMF conditionality established for Guyana was not conducive to agricultural development.

And the PPP-Civic Government has now done a good job to educate the Guyanese public about the conditionalities we have to subscribe to before we can be eligible for loans from the IDB.

We fully know that agriculture is the backbone of Guyana, and drainage is the backbone of agriculture; but we cannot subsidise agriculture, even though donor countries can subsidise all aspects of their agriculture.

However, we need to congratulate the Government for the meticulous way they were able to underscore IMF dictates to keep our farmers on the land to avert this global food crisis.

President Bharrat Jagdeo has not lost his working-class touch, even though he became the Chairman of the World Bank, all because of his astute application of well-thought-out economic strategies and the dialectics of a given situation.

We can therefore hold him to his word that he is the President for all Guyana, and let us leave our politics out of the need to feed the nation, or we will surely starve to death.
Isahak Basir, CCH

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