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$500M set aside for poultry self sufficiency
Newly appointed NAREI CEO (left) Jagnarine Singh along with Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha.
Kaieteur News – Government has allocated $500M in this year’s budget to commence infrastructural work in the Intermediate Savannah, with a number of investors already expressing interest in the sector as part of the charge laid by President, Irfaan Ali, that the country becomes self-sufficient, in the production of protein for the poultry industry.
This charge was handed to newly appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Agriculture Research and Extension Institute – former head of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRD) – Jagnarine Singh.
Singh takes over from Dr. Oudho Homenauth, who was employed by the agency for the past 20 years. The new CEO, along with NAREI staffers met recently with Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha, to discuss how the agency is expected to implement the new policies set by the government in an effort to reposition and revamp agriculture in Guyana.
Minister Mustapha told the staff that, with Guyana taking back its rightful place with agriculture in the Caribbean, and that NAREI has an important role to play, as the agency is mandated to manage agriculture research and development.
“We are looking to revamp the agriculture sector. If we want to take our rightful place regionally and internationally, institutions like NAREI have to play a very important role.”
As such, the Minister charged NAREI to strategize, saying, “We have to come up with innovative ideas and we have to implement the policies of the government.”
Mustapha noted that what has been done, as a government, was to craft a number of policies for the various sectors and that “last year we had the emergency budget and we were able to successfully implement a number of those initiatives.”
He projected that “This year, the goal is to build on what we started last year in addition to the new programmes that will come on stream. We have to change the traditional way we have been doing things here.”
The Minister is adamant that “while we have been giving support to farmers, we have to now ramp up our activities and bring new ideas because we cannot continue to do things in a subsistent way, we have to move a step further.”
Singh, in his remarks as the newly appointed CEO, surmised that there needs to be some amount of improvement to the services offered to farmers and that science must be incorporated into the extension services offered to the farmers.
“This (NAREI) used to be the central agricultural station and I would like for us to go back to those days when we used to be the central agricultural station in the country.”
He drew reference to the fact that “over the years at the Rice Board, I remember I had some problems with soils management and I had to end up going around the circle and sending soil samples to Miami.”
Recognizing Guyana, as a “big agriculture producing country;” the CEO was emphatic that “we need to enhance and improve our services to the farmers. Not just soils, but our technical and diagnostic capacity in all areas of plant science; I would want some science involved.”
According to Singh, scientists must be involved and that “whatever we are doing must be climate smart, it must be sustainable and profitable, so that our farmers can live a good life.”
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