THE small community of Ebini, located up the Upper Berbice River, close to an hour’s ride by boat from Kwakwani, is set to become the agricultural hub of Region 10.
And it’s all thanks to the Regional Democratic Council, which is pursuing all avenues to boost the agricultural sector in the region, which has been ailing for some decades now.
The community, which has its genesis in farming, continues to depend on the soil for survival, and agriculture as well as livestock rearing are the main economic activities.
Being aware of the fertile soil and the availability of many experienced farmers, the National Agricultural Research Extension Institution (NAREI), in collaboration with the Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA), is making serious strides to revive agriculture in Ebini.

In a missive to Regional Chairman, Mr Renis Morian, NAREI reported that the two entities at reference have a total of 25 employees in the community. They currently occupy about 1500 acres of farming land, 1000 acres of which are dedicated to livestock production, specifically cattle and sheep.
The remaining 500 acres comprise of orchard crops, which are currently under cultivation, and this will be expanded by another 20 acres this year.
Thirty acres are under coconuts, and about five acres are dedicated to grapefruit production. NAREI is currently conducting experiments on corn, soybeans, red peas, cassava and black-eye peas, while a nursery was recently set up to produce seedlings.
As if this were not enough, NAREI has also recently acquired an additional 15000 acres of land from the Guyana Lands and Survey Commission (GLSC) for the new project to be implemented with the IDB.
This operation will soon compete with the large-scale operations of a Brazilian investor who is in the process of commencing corn and soya bean production.
The investor and his team are proposing to do a 200-acre plot of soybean around May-June 2017.
THE CHALLENGES
Regional Chairman Renis Morian, in his quest to boost agricultural production in the community given its potential in that regard, recently dispatched a team, led by former Regional Chairman Mortimer Mingo, to meet with farmers in the community, who were eager to voice their concerns and talk about the challenges.
At the meeting, held on March 21 with about 34 farmers, it was revealed to the team that only about 65-70 acres of land are accessible to them.
Each farmer is entitled to between 5-10 acres of this amount. The farmers highlighted their plight of working with limited equipment and seeds, but making priority on the list is the deplorable state of the access road which is approximately a mile long and leads from the waterfront to the Ebini Savannah.

The state of the road, coupled with the lack of cheap and reliable river transportation, has resulted in farmers losing big on their produce. “We were informed that quite a lot of the produce perished before meeting markets, and that the middle-men, who are few in number, usually offer them prices for their produce, which is way below what it cost them to produce their products,” Mingo wrote in his report to Morian following the meeting with the Ebini farmers.
“About six of the farmers informed us that on one acre of land they cultivated with watermelons, their yield was about 8000 pounds of melon per farmer, and they were forced to sell same for about $25-30 per pound,” he added.
The farmers have also opted for the lands to be leased to them by the government through Lands and Survey so that they can become qualified for loans from banks or lending institutions.
This financing will assist them in expanding their farms. The farmers also highlighted that during the dry season, their crops suffer as a result of limited water resources and are requesting that at least two wells be dug in the Savannah.
Regional Chairman Morian has noted these challenges and will be putting systems in place to alleviate them soonest.