Latest update April 28th, 2026 12:30 AM
Diversifying Agricultural Diversification
Sugar mono-cropping was long acknowledged as one of the debilitating legacies of colonialism in Guyana. The development of the rice industry by the Indian indentured labourers was allowed only because it relieved pressures on the plantocracy to raise wages in the sugar industry and to elide the repatriation costs.
Official attempts to diversify our agricultural base in a systematic manner began in the 1980s when the PNC embarked on an ambitious drive to convert some of the sugar lands into tilapia and “other crops” production – the latter included black-eyed peas. Much of the efforts of the Guyana National Service (GNS) were also aimed in this direction. All of these efforts at diversification literally reverted back to the “bush” after billions of dollars in expenditure.
We mention this against the background of the latest injection of funds towards the same end. The UK Department For International Development (DFID) is providing financial support to Government’s Agriculture Diversification and Export Promotion (ADP) drive. The organisation is providing Government with funding to the tune of $400 million to support the Guyana Agriculture Diversification Programme (ADP). The specific goal is to boost the production of tilapia and some for the “4P’s” – pumpkin (butternut squash) and peppers (sweet and hot). The papaya and passion fruits seem to have died on the vine.
The Minister mentioned the previous sponsor of his programme – USAID – which had pumped some $2.2 billion into it before moving on. The silver bullet this time, we were informed by the Minister, is “finding” markets. “Find the market and people will find a way of producing, markets drive the production chain,” he promised. But he himself identified the disjunct between rhetoric and reality in this seemingly perennial quest to diversify agriculture. He noted that our Caricom partner Trinidad was importing US$50 million of tilapia this year from China while we were overproducing tilapia for our domestic market.
Two points come to mind: did the Minister raise this point when his Trinidadian counterpart visited earlier this year to explore addressing his country’s food security problem by establishing mega farms here? And more pointedly, did our good Minister raise the small point of the 40% tariff that would apply to the tilapia if they were sourced from outside the region when we could supply the item?
But the USAID funds were only the drop in the ocean of moneys that have been poured into this diversification drive without any evident progress. Take the goal of the DFID intervention: “to work directly with farmers to introduce new technologies and raise productivity; streamlining the paperwork and red tape for investors and exporters; and helping to build relationships with new markets and buyers.” This sounds eerily similar to the goals of the 2010 IDB programme when $4.4 billion was pumped into the ADP (with another $220 million matching funds from the government):
“The programme targets an increase in the export of non-traditional agricultural commodities and it seeks to establish services and institutions for a sustainable increase in the income derived from the export of non-traditional agricultural exports in the aquaculture, fruits and vegetables, and livestock sub-sectors such as beef, peppers, pumpkins, plantains and farm grown fish, particularly tilapia.” Then there was the 2007 International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) US$6M Rural Enterprise and Agricultural Development (READ) Project that was supposed to complement the ADP. We will not mention the other programmes. Where did all the money go?
And we have not mentioned the countless billions that came directly from the Consolidated Funds to provide infrastructural development that supported the entire agricultural sector, including the crop diversification.
It appears that the wheel is being reinvented every time a donor offers some funding. It was pointed out by letter writers that the Minister’s recent announcement that his Ministry will be encouraging the cultivation of black-eyed peas appeared to be completely oblivious of the previous GuySuCo and GNS initiatives.
We suspect that most of these funds might have been spent on consultants and insiders as was the case with the IDB’s Citizens Security Programme now under investigation.
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