Burnham’s banning of food items was classic cart before the horse thinking

Sep 13, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Every nation wants to achieve self-sufficiency. It is a reality that should be pushed for where possible. But self-sufficiency requires not just political will, but markets, logistical support, roads, transportation, support of the citizenry, understanding of dietary, cultural and other preferences, the underlying capacity to produce the replaced product and most critically to ensure delivery to market is consistent and punctual.
Without these underlying realities addressed, any campaign that radically affects something as fundamental as the food on a nation’s table will have drastic consequences and raise momentous ire.
On a purely utilitarian and theoretical basis, the Feed the Nation campaign was an excellent idea. Same goes for the PPP’s update on the old model with its Grow More Food campaign. But such a concept was badly misapplied and poorly executed by Burnham. The PPP’s current campaign suffers from some of the frailties of Burnham’s programme.
Banning food first and then seeking to grow later is plain stupidity. Before any ban on foodstuffs is implemented policy-making 101 dictates: (1) that replacement quantity is guaranteed; (2) replacement quality is guaranteed and the substitute must be similar and liked by the populace; (3) the dietary habits and patterns of the populace are fully considered; (4) economic landscape locally and internationally; (4) reaction of the people.
Dictatorships don’t make good policy. Unilateral imposition of failed policies can result in terrible starvation and hardship. People eat several times every day. A ban creates immediate deprivation of a daily meal if no proper replacement exists. The most critical item banned by Burnham was wheat flour. Guyanese consumed anywhere from 350,000 to 400,000 lbs of flour daily before the ban. Replacement quantity from rice flour, ground provisions, etc. could never be enough.
In fact, contraband wheat flour was at times more readily available than the infamous rice flour. The quality of the substitute was laughable. Guyanese people have been eating wheat flour from since at least the 1800s. Burnham knew Guyanese ate bread and roti religiously for breakfast and dinner. And they loved pastries and cakes. And they use flour at Christian, Hindu and Muslim religious festivals. And that they would resist this change to their diet.
The blackmarket trade and the fact that wheat flour was readily available to those in power confirmed the importance of wheat flour to the Guyanese people. Burnham did not consider or blatantly ignored the dietary truths of the nation in his brutal quest to impose his idealism.
Some indigenous producers expanded production in Guyana in reaction to the ban and made profits, but the ban never catapulted local businesses into any sustained agricultural or industrial development and expansionism. Local producers simply could not produce these items or at the scale required by the nation.
The local economy was in tatters. They simply could not supply 350,000 to 400,000 lbs of a substitute for wheat flour, more so provide a proper substitute. Plus, the quality of produce could never compete with some foreign items. Heavy price cuts by Western nations due to dumping and anti-communist trade strategies, plunging commodity prices from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s and the push to export for desperately needed foreign exchange meant severe shortages at home and cheaper imports from abroad was the reality.
Since 1964 tens of thousands of Africans left commercial activities and went into public service. Similarly, throngs of Indian producers were shutting businesses, downsizing and fleeing the country. There is no way a broken production model devastated by decades of economic decline could deliver 350,000 to 400,000 lbs of a substitute to wheat flour or anything for that matter.
Producers faced the plummeting value of the Guyanese dollar. Markets were bare. This model could not compete on price and quantity with foreign products realised from efficient production models.
Burnham’s plan was due to die a painful death for these myriad reasons. The thinking that locals will pay inflated or uncompetitive local prices from local producers with these bans was flawed. The Guyanese consumer was grappling with depressing poverty, where every dollar had to be stretched beyond imagination to barely stay alive and price was paramount.
In this market reality the consumer is better off getting value for its extremely limited resources by buying cheaper good as this creates savings for the consumer, more disposable income and possibly more income for investment. If imports are cheaper then no premium should be paid to local producers, who cannot deliver consistently. Further, the use of scarce personal resources to buy contraband items at inflated prices thereby deepening their poverty should have signaled to any conscionable government that it is better to allow the product to be imported freely and sold cheaply rather than witness the entrenchment of impoverishment of poor people, who are killing themselves paying more of the nothing they have for the product they need.
These manifestations are outright condemnation of Burnham’s failed cart before the horse mentality in almost everything he did. Ban first and that will force people to grow more. Well, crops just don’t sprout from fields overnight. Pilot projects should have been run. It is absolutely clear that flour had no substitute. That is one item that should never have been banned, as it dominates two of the primary meals of every Guyanese in breakfast and dinner.
The possibility certainly existed to consider mixed flour with a local substitute such as rice (properly grounded) or corn flour mixed with wheat flour creating profits for local industry. Burnham was a master of grand ideas, poor planning, failed execution and blatant disregard for the people that lived under his draconian hand.
Michael Maxwell

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