IN recent months the focus has been on the waves being made of Guyana’s oil and gas potentials, and on the re-organisation of the sugar industry.

Both of these industries, properly organised and managed, would take Guyana to the new level of development so necessary for economic security. It is now becoming clearer that Guyanese would not find safe havens elsewhere, as in the past, where hundreds of thousands of our people had sought refuge as economic immigrants.

The opposite is now true, as Guyana becomes a destination for traders and job seekers from regional states.
Guyana will increasingly become the new economic frontier on account of our enormous natural resources – agricultural lands in particular. We have shown that we could produce more than our domestic market needs, and could become a primary food basket in the region.

Nowhere is more evident of this than the rice sector. In 2015, following the collapse of the Venezuelan market under the previous administration, there were fears that rice farmers would abandon their fields. But our farmers rallied to fresh demands for our rice and paddy. In that year, they exported 537, 334 metric tonnes of rice. Access to new markets resulted by 2017 in an increase in production by 12.7 per cent at 602,087 metric tonnes. Paddy production was close to one million metric tonnes, the highest ever. The Mexican market opened its door wide to Guyana paddy, and took some 88,000 tonnes for new markets – Canada, USA, Cuba and Peru came on board, which account for export to 34 countries.

Side by side with rice exports is that of fish. In 2017, Guyana harvested 30,000 metric tonnes of seafood and exported over $13 billion of the catch. With more emphasis on aquaculture, Guyana would be counted as a rich supplier of both fresh and salt-water fish and shrimp.

Our food security is assured with the introduction of better chicken breed and duck hatchlings, both on the coast and hinterland poultry farms. At the same time, we are becoming self-sufficient in beef, pork, and mutton production.

In every nation, agriculture should be top on the list of national development sector priorities, since it is about ensuring that citizens are afforded the opportunity of unhindered access to ready supplies of available fresh food of nutritional value. This translates into a well-fed and healthy citizenry. But there is also a significantly important benefit as well: that agriculture as a well-managed, economic activity enhances the particular region/community where such activity takes place, as well as being a central contributor to the GDP. In other words, its contribution to national development is pivotal.

Guyana, like so many of its sister-CARICOM member states, has a traditional history of agricultural activity that has its genesis in the sugar plantation system. And along our very expansive coastal belt, cane-farming whether as a private or state activity is still very much in evidence. But there are hundreds of rice and coconut farms, and numerous examples of other-crops activities as well.

It is because of this continuous activity through the decades, that Guyana for a while had largely been recognised as the food basket of the Caribbean, an accolade that assumed even greater significance for a period during our early modern political history, with the Grow More Food campaign as part of the Clothe, House and Feed the nation plan. Citizens, particularly those in Georgetown and its environs, were encouraged to plant ground provisions and other crops on every available land space around their homes and residences. Even public offices took part in this national food drive.

The time has come for Guyana to stop beating up on who we are, with tons of negative views that would send the wrong message that we are suffering, and that we are unable to satisfy the basic needs of our people. No one here is starving, and we need to be proud that Guyana has food security.