High Food Prices, Low Job Prospects — Agriculture Technology Is a Smart Bet for Guyana’s Youth

Oct 19, 2025 Features / Columnists, News

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By Karen Abrams, MBA, AA, Doctoral Candidate

(Kaieteur News) – Speaking at the launch of the World Bank’s AGRICONNECT: Farms, Firms and Finance for Jobs initiative, designed to transform small-scale farming into an engine of sustainable growth, employment and food security,  World Bank President Ajay Banga issued a bold warning.

Over the next 10 to 15 years, 1.2 billion young people will enter the global workforce, but current projections suggest the world will create only 400 million jobs. “If we do not create opportunities for the 800 million young people who will be left behind,” he cautioned, “we will not just face an economic crisis, we will face a human crisis.” His message was unambiguous; agriculture, powered by technology and private capital, remains one of the few sectors capable of absorbing youth at scale, delivering long-term employment, and securing the world’s food future.

Banga’s words are not about farming as hand-to-mouth survival, his words reinforce a global call for nations to pay more than lip service to agriculture.  It is about redefining agriculture as a modern wealth industry. Banga emphasized that global food demand is expected to rise by more than 50 percent in coming decades, while food prices continue their upward climb. “Food systems are no longer simply about feeding people, they are about powering economies, stabilizing nations, and creating millions of jobs,” he said.

This is where Guyana stands at a crossroads.  When I grew up here in the 1980s, every family in my community planted something; bora, thyme, ochro, tomatoes and every family had several fruit trees – papaw, guava, mango. You could not walk a street without seeing ducks or chickens in someone’s yard. That culture has quietly vanished, just as food prices are climbing faster than most household salaries. So the question must now be asked; Why aren’t more Guyanese families planting even small quantities again? Not as charity, but as a strategy. Not for subsistence, but for food cost reduction or even for income.  An added benefit of reviving the kitchen garden is that it pulls children away from constant screen time and online games and engages them in real-world learning, teaching them about agriculture, basic technology, plant care, and even home-based food processing.

Ajay Banga is urging developing nations to move quickly. “The future of food is also the future of jobs,” he said. “Countries that combine agriculture with technology, precision farming, cold storage, data platforms, logistics and digital marketplaces, will not just feed themselves. They will dominate export markets and create the next generation of millionaires.”

That is the scale of opportunity Guyana is sitting on. And yet, we are still losing too much of what we grow. Research by Jorge M. Fonseca of the United States Department of Agriculture estimates that 50 percent of fruits and vegetables and 37 percent of root crops are lost in Latin America and the Caribbean before reaching consumers. Globally, 14 percent of food is lost before even reaching the retail stage, mostly due to lack of cold storage and weak logistics. Fonseca makes it clear , “this is not a production problem. It is an infrastructure problem. Waste is eating our wealth before we even get to market.”

This is why the Government of Guyana’s effort to build food-processing facilities across Guyana is smart, but each must include adequate capacity for cold storage and this is non-negotiable. If food spoils before it can be bought, food security collapses, and youth opportunity dies with it.

Guyanese youth need to understand that agriculture today is not limited to planting with cutlass in the hot sun. It includes packaging, freeze-drying, ready-to-cook meal prep, snack manufacturing, AI crop diagnostics, greenhouse automation, export product design, and tech-enabled supply chains. It is data. It is robotics. It is logistics. It is innovation. It is, in Ajay Banga’s words, “the single greatest chance for developing countries to grow faster than the rich world.”

Guyana is leading CARICOM’s “25 by 2025” initiative to cut regional food imports by 25 percent but that leadership must also translate into a national movement to “Grow Food Again.” The government can jump-start this effort by offering seeds and seedlings to households and by fast-tracking approvals for agricultural lands, with a clear condition that unfarmed land be reclaimed within six months. Families must begin planting again, even if only in containers. Investors must expand beyond real estate and into cold storage, processing, and food logistics. And our youth must dive into agriculture technology and see agriculture as more than employment.  They must view agriculture as the fastest path to ownership, to wealth.

There is no need to wait for the government to begin. Families can act now. I challenge every household to start a small kitchen garden by next weekend. Plant something and reduce your food bill while empowering your family.  The global food race has already begun, and Guyana is not behind, unless we choose to stand still.

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• AGRICONNECT, Agriculture Technology, Ajay Banga, High Food Prices, Karen Abrams, Low Job Prospects

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