A blueprint for the diversification of Wales Estate

Sep 08, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
I refer to my letter, “Guyana’s future must be based on an agricultural economy, (KN, Sep.7). In this missive here I would like to suggest some steps for a new beginning. Wales estate offer a great opportunity
1 Land devolved into practical useful size plots for family cultivation.
2 Funding for loans which will be used as seed capital by the new landed farmer for basic but fundamentally difficult steps toward their development and prosperity. The seed loans are the venue through which the farmer is educated to the new technologies inherent in wind, water and solar engines. A new understanding of how water, wind and effort can be brought to the land for effective agricultural production. Hopefully to allow the farmers to an epiphany which says “farming is a profession of the utmost values, and not a fall back for the poor and defeated in spirit”.
3 This will naturally develop as an adjunct as the farmer gets more familiar with alternate energy technology to link him to the global community or link the individual farmer and community of farmers to the global similarities of interest.
4 OPENING of a channel for innovation, innovative thinking and experimentation and research.
5 Initial mapping of what a green economy could and should be.
6 A defining model that can be used in other traditionally agricultural communities in Guyana especially and worldwide.
7 The creation of not new urban communities, but globalized villages directly interacting with each other.
Norway Fund: The biggest problem which appears to be hindering the transition of sugar industry in forms and function is the universal lament of lack of capital (money) seen as necessary for any movement to occur in transition to take form or begin. Notwithstanding the fact that there is the GREEN FUND the Govt of Norway has agreed to as part of Guyana’s commitment to the protection of its greenery. CAPITAL inherent in the Guyana Diaspora – – savings and assets that might be mobilized if some form of a monetary financial system were to be implemented in Guyana i.e an active and well stocked Equities Market, Bond Market, at National, Municipal and Community levels.
We do want cooperation among the future adherents of the Project Wales. This cooperation need not be in form but in substance. Settlers will be in charge of their own cultivation plots, they will cooperate by way of written contracts, and basic regulations in areas of maintenance of drainage and irrigation, dams, joint purchase of inputs to production, joint marketing, central processing, and all matters relevant to assuring sound business practices. As a consequence of the foregone, cooperation/cooperatives would emerge, being the natural needs/requirements of community life.
Senior and other managerial staff at Wales is essential to the superintendence of the project. The projection of Wales as the forerunner to a larger transition will include the entire West Bank Demerara. The former cane farmers who have been involved in the cooperative spirit, other owners of free hold lands, including the Canals Polder will come under the umbrella of the seasoned managers in the creation of mega fruit production, beginning with Wales.
Some form of training in “other crops” will be quickly absorbed by these skilled persons, who already know the new farmers, the terrain and other faculties of Wales. We should endeavour to keep these professionals in the rural environment for all sorts of reasons, chief of which is the continued brain drain that has been affecting Guyana for decades. These are bare-boned possibilities for the envisioning and implementation of the Transition process at Wales.
Hafiz Rahaman
Rural People Organization

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