Latest update March 29th, 2025 5:06 AM
Govt. in private/public partnership to produce corn – Dr. Ramsammy
Government will be venturing into a public/private partnership this year to produce corn on a commercial level in Guyana to reduce the cost of corn and soya imports by 50 percent by the year 2020.
This is according to Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, Minister of Agriculture, during a recent interview. The Minister assured that Government has not indentified a person or company as yet to engage in this initiative.
Dr. Leslie Ramsammy
In the Minister’s budget debate presentation he noted that the high cost of meat production in Guyana is owing to the country’s dependency on imported inputs, like corn and soya to produce feed.
Corn is not a new crop for Guyana but commercial scale corn production is new. However, soya is a new crop for Guyana.
He noted that work was initiated in 2013 to acquire and test higher yielding varieties of corn and soybean which are adaptable to local conditions. These commodities are being targeted principally as ingredients in animal feed. Significant quantities of corn (40,000 tons) and a similar amount of soybean are imported on an annual basis. The target is to reduce imports of these by half by 2020,” he said.
“The results so far indicate that at least two of the imported varieties (open pollinated) of corn could be produced economically. Yields of up to eight tons per acre were obtained, four times more than our local variety.
“Initial cost of production is $25 per pound. We currently import corn at $50 per pound. The yield for soybean was 2.5 tons per acre which is similar to Brazil,” Dr. Ramsammy stated.
He said that commercial size plots would be established in 2014. A package would be developed for investors.
“We expect to partner with at least one investor in 2014 to develop a semi-commercial enterprise,” he said.
“A major thrust for corn and soybean production will be for the livestock feed. For example, in the US, about 80 percent of all corn grown is consumed by domestic and overseas livestock, poultry, and fish production while over 30 million tons of soybean meal is consumed as livestock feed in a year,” Dr. Ramsammy said.
Dr. Ramsammy, commenting on developing affordable stockfeed for the aquaculture industry, said that 60 percent of the cost for aquaculture operation is the feed. “And that is why we can’t compete with China and so on,” he added.
The Minister believes that criticisms of the Satyadeow Sawh Aquaculture Station not doing enough to develop the sector are unfair.
“What has happened is that everybody is becoming dependent on Satyadeow Sawh to produce fingerlings. But it was supposed to be a research centre not just to produce fingerlings. And so this is where we are doing like pacu, producing the initial stock but also the researching, he noted.
Dr. Ramsammy said that the Ministry is shifting more towards conducting research to show and teach farmers rather than focusing on producing fingerlings, though that will continue to be a function of the station.
“One of the researches we are doing is in finding feed. And I had identified that as a major area for development in the agriculture sector. Research as a whole but one of the research s is for us to produce our own stock feed. There are few countries in the world that do that do the bigger countries.”
According to Dr. Ramsammy, Guyana is poised to produce feed now. He said that poultry feed is produced locally. Nonetheless, the cost for the stock feed is high owing to the high cost of inputs like corn and soya.
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