As fears mount of a possible food crisis from the COVID-19 pandemic…

Mar 25, 2020 News

Guyanese need to urgently
return to farms and kitchen gardens

– NAREI CEO

Pull quote: ‘We are buying Vitamin C tablets and ‘builders’ when we could be growing and utilising our own, such as cherries, oranges and other citrus fruits…

Dr. Oudho Homenauth, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Agricultural Research & Extension Institute (NAREI)

– Dr. Oudho Homenauth

Go back to the land.That’s the urgent message Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Agricultural Research & Extension Institute (NAREI) Dr. Oudho Homenauth has for Guyanese, as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to hold sway.
In an exclusive telephone interview, the CEO told Kaieteur News that, “we have a serious pandemic… and one of the major problems would be food.”
He added that with the closing of borders and ports across the world, the sourcing of food would become difficult. “Stores, supermarkets, and businesses in the whole are running out of supplies, people are panic buying causing shortages in the stores,” he said.
Dr. Homenauth explained that a simple solution to this problem would be “going back to basic agricultural practices such as kitchen gardening.”
He added that there have been several calls by NAREI to look at alternative foods and “growing what we produce.”
Further, the CEO noted that ‘we are buying Vitamin C tablets and builders when we could be growing and utilising our own, such as cherries, oranges and other citrus fruits. This would even help us to economise because with businesses closing, some people are at home and this can provide a financial strain on these individuals. Growing food would release this burden.”
Additionally, the Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), Manuel Otero, also said that the coronavirus pandemic provides a situation for the Caribbean to develop food security strategies and greater efforts to increase self-sufficiency.
Older Guyanese may hearken back to the seventies and eighties, when practically every family planted kitchen gardens in response to the country’s drive to consume local foods.