Guyana’s agricultural policy has been decided by fate

Jan 26, 2018 Letters

Greetings Editor,
We are at a time in our national history when mistrust of the responsiveness of Government will have reached a critical point – a point at which an increasing number of Guyanese feel denied and even robbed of the power to influence public policy.
This mood is not the prerogative of any group or class, and it can be a good and healthy thing if those in Government will listen.
But if no one will listen, this lack of communication causes frustration and fear which can lead to hate. Fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence.
We want renewed assurance that we have some control over our physical assets, our patrimony and our spiritual destiny.
We want to know that the important decisions affecting our lives, and our very existence, will not be made by any anonymous others in power who may have no suitable consideration for our wishes. The public requires a larger role in the direction of its fate.
In this time of great opportunity Guyana needs great leadership. We need fearless men and women to unite us and lead us.
We need a truly national approach to Government, and we must have people in Government who will possess the courage to accept responsibility for planning and implementing that will lift us as a nation.
The Government must be visionary in nature and be prepared to provide for citizens the physical things only caring Governments can endeavour to do.
A tragedy of insufferable proportion seems to be unfolding in our history as a former colony of Europe- in our case Britain; in light of the sugar industry facing miniaturisation, and the need to transition sugar to meet the demands of the present time of severe unemployment, under-employment, vast number of young people looking for a way out of their predicament.
Guarding other people’s properties has now become a major source of employment. .The proposal of diversification from sugar has been in the news since 1974, when European Community made it clear to the African-Pacific- Caribbean countries that preferential market and prices would end in given time. Few countries of the ACP took this truth as policy, and embarked on their own diversification..
Guyana began a diversification through the State Corporation, Guysuco, and the results have not been kept as a secret.
Yet this same Guysuco is operating as if it has done Guyana a favour by bringing sugar to insolvency.
The successive Boards of Directors failed to meet the challenges of an enterprise going downhill.
We have discussed in KN columns the corruption at Guysuco.
The squandering of European Union billions of dollars provided for diversification purposes is yet to be explained. Where has all that money gone? Will the EU representatives in Georgetown tell their tax-payers where their tax Euros were spent in Guyana..
The huge cut in the export price for our sugar was fore-warned. The EU money was meant to off-set the harshness of sugar’s demise.
We may run out of space providing for readers the misdeeds of previous Government.
The trade unions operated as if sugar was still owned by Bookers and Sandbach Parker. At present, our sugar workers are fighting over severance pay.
We have written numerous letters to the press and to Government officials who do not acknowledge letters, but we see evidence of ideas we promoted becoming public property.
The sugar lands must not be sold to anyone, but given to former sugar workers, and we now promote the idea that such land be given to the descendants of the enslaved who created all the present sugar lands from jungle.
As we have said in other articles all lands in Guyana that bear Dutch, French or English names were created for agriculture, whether the crop was cotton, coffee, indigo or whatever other crops the European Slaves chose to cultivate through enslaved labour.
National Farmers Organization wishes to establish Guyana as a nation of small farmers, because small farmers grow seventy percent of the planet’s food on thirty percent of the world’s lands.
Transitioning sugar lands to create jobs for the rural population in light of the need to find work for citizens of the country offers a good chance that Guyana is on its way to becoming a sizable food basket.
The 21st century economy for Guyana has been decided by policy and fate, to be one which will be based on both a green and agricultural economy. We have all the resources; land, water, sunshine and able persons fit to be farmers.
Hafiz Rahman
National Farmers
Organization.

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Guyana’s agricultural policy has been decided by fate

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