By Clifford Stanley

MINISTER of Agriculture Noel Holder held fruitful discussions on opportunities generated by the technical cooperation provided by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) during a three-day visit to the headquarters of the IICA in Costa Rica last week.
The minister was accompanied by Richard Nigel, Director-General of the Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA); Ida Sealey, General Manager of the Guyana Marketing Corporation and several others.

During the discussions, Minister Holder told IICA officials that its technical cooperation programme in Guyana should emphasise comprehensive water management, creation of a soil map, processing of value-added products with a view to increasing the exportable supply, creation of links between small producers and markets and promotion of the dairy industry.

“We need to better understand our topography and soil, how to improve our productivity and how to optimise marketing for our agriculture; in this way, we will be able to better plan our use of resources and swiftly implement a strategy that drives dairy production,” Holder told IICA Officials.

According to a media release from IICA, the ministerial delegation travelled throughout different Costa Rican provinces .

They participated in a tour of the Dos Pinos factory, in Coyol de Alajuela.

Dos Pinos, the largest dairy company in Central America and the Caribbean, processes 1.4 million litres of milk per day.

The milk is used to produce a range of over 600 dairy products.

Participants learned about the company’s mode of operation, co-operative model, and contributions to national development, as well as the support it provides to producers to increase farm efficiency.

The delegation also visited EARTH University in Guácimo, Limón, to broaden their knowledge of peri-urban production systems. They visited the university’s food-processing laboratory, where they learned about the production, value-adding, and marketing processes.

Minister Holder and his team  discussed integrated livestock farming, visited the banana packing plant, and learned about the field-to-market, quality control, and sanitary and phytosanitary inspection processes for bananas.

Minister Holder and his delegation  also visited the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Centre (CATIE) in Turrialba, where they learned about the good practices the centre implements in its commercial dairy production, as well as its intensive tropical lowland production model, whose main objective is to produce quality milk at very low cost with minimal emissions.

They also visited the CATIE International Cocoa Collection, a potential source of clones that are resistant to pests, diseases and extreme conditions.

Overall, the minister and the delegation learned about IICA’s work as well as production methods that could be replicated in Guyana.

They also discussed possible opportunities for more intense collaboration between the institute and the ministry.