PR CANNOT SOLVE THE PROBLEMS IN AGRICULTURE

Dec 17, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

When the Minister of Agriculture took office, this column warned him that his future would have been tied to the fortunes of sugar. This column urged him to take a proactive role in monitoring- not managing- the sugar industry because sugar is so important to national output as whole that any decline in sugar production was going to extremely harmful to the economy.
The present Minister of Agriculture has a good PR image. He is constantly in the news. His almost every meeting, even if it is a simple gathering in his boardroom, is covered by the media. One day somebody is going to turn up to cover him brushing his teeth. He is not short of PR coverage.
His Ministry has been provided with a great deal of resources to manage the sector. Billions are being spent on drainage and irrigation, on growing more food, on responding to El Nino and on a host of other things.
In such a situation it is possible for a Minister with so much on his plate to take his eyes off the ball. This column had forewarned that while there were a great many things to be done in the agricultural sector, the sugar industry was perhaps the most critical.
And this importance was made even more pronounced given the global context. Revenues from sugar were falling as a result of changes to the trading arrangements in Europe; there was a shortage of labour as more and more workers sought greener pastures and refused to have their children follow in their footsteps by undertaking backbreaking work in the fields. Sugar had its challenges and therefore required intense monitoring.
The canes have now ripened. The industry is in problems. The signs of the decline of sugar came early when problems developed with the test- runs of the new factory. Last year the corporation lost millions, Booker Tate was sent packing, a new interim Board appointed and a turnaround plan established.
There, however, could be little comfort in these developments because the signs also came early that production for 2009 was not going to be as planned. In fact, this was evident from the end of the first crop. This year sugar production will most likely fall under 240,000 tonnes.
This is not good at all and especially considering that GUYSUCO is aiming to cap production in a few years time at around 450,000 tonnes. It will require more than a turnaround plan for production to reach that level. In fact, it is most likely that within the next five years even with private farms coming on board GUYSUCO will struggle to grind 350,000 tonnes.
Under the PPP government of 1961, when the industry was still under foreign ownership, production was 324,745 tonnes. Today we are producing 100,00 tons less than what we were producing at our peak. In this scenario, PR cannot save the industry.
PR is not also going to obscure the reality and other productive sectors in agriculture are underperforming. Recent data published in the newspapers reveal that for all the talk about Growing More Food, we have not been doing well in other crops.
And so this posing that is taking place in front of cameras must be reduced and serious consultations take place about the future of agriculture in Guyana because the Grow More Food campaign has been a failure and that failure did not come without a price tag.
Why is it that so much money is being spent on agriculture and yet production has not been good? Why is it that despite us exporting so much food we are still not generating impressive output figures in other crops?
One of the reasons that the government has historically ignored is the reduction of the rural peasantry. The government has paid little heed to this development even though the most recent census has confirmed a pattern of depopulation of rural villages and towns.
No matter how much money is spent on growing more food or even on drainage and irrigation or even in the sugar industry, if there is not the manpower within the agricultural growing areas, there will not be the production and this is so because of the many small farms that are in existence which require manpower.
It is a lesson that the Ministry of Agriculture should pay heed to. Instead of paying attention to crop insurance- something that is unaffordable and not viable in Guyana, instead of the PR that is taking place, the Ministry of Agriculture needs to get back the basics and to study the trends that are affecting agriculture, including non- farm trends such as increased urbanization.
PR is about image but in the case of agriculture the image of the sector is not looking too good.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News