Fish farming could be traced back to early East Indian villagers on the Corentyne Coast
Aquaculture in Guyana has a bright future and in the next five years it will “fly”. But the right approach to the agricultural endeavour is quintessential for success. President of the National Aquaculture Association of Guyana (NAAG), Mr. Beni Sankar, has been engaged in aquaculture for the last three years.
“People think it is easy. When you get involved you see that it is very different. You have to consider the logistics of it…there is money in aquaculture but you have to do it right,” he said.
In his view, “right” means the right location with proper drainage and irrigation, good water quality, proper feed and of course the relevant technology.
He referred to the Agriculture Diversification Programme (ADP) being piloted by the Ministry of Agriculture and said the programme makes provision for support, which includes technical support and other resources.
“Right now we do not have all the technology…The ADP will change that…we need the know-how,” Sankar said.
With the ADP, it is hoped that some level of training will be facilitated, on the job training, he specified.
The ADP is being funded by the Inter-American Development Bank at a cost of US$21.9M with counterpart funding from the Government of Guyana of US$1.1M.  The programme targets an increase in the export of non-traditional agricultural commodities and it seeks to establish services and institutions for a sustainable increase in the income derived from the export of non-traditional agricultural exports in the aquaculture, fruits and vegetables, and livestock sub-sectors, such as beef, peppers, pumpkins, plantains and farm grown fish, particularly tilapia.
Tilapia, pacu and hassar are some of the newest farm-raised seafood being produced through aquaculture.
According to the NAAG President, there are several persons already involved in fish farming, but he noted that others want to see some form of success before coming on board.
Women’s Involvement
“Women, especially women heading single parent families, can become engaged in aquaculture because it is not very strenuous and does not take much time, except during harvesting,” he said.
Sankar added that once the fish pond is set up, all that is needed, except during harvesting, is monitoring the water quality and feeding the fishes twice a day.
The NAAG President reiterated that there is a bright future for aquaculture in Guyana.
To this end, he pointed to the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) that is being advanced by President Jagdeo.
Sankar said with green water aquaculture, algae are introduced into the ponds and assist in the reduction of carbon in the atmosphere.
Experts have reported that nearly all algae have photosynthetic machinery and so produce oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis.
“The more algae, the more oxygen is produced, and the more carbon is taken out of the atmosphere…this is a good undertaking in many ways,” he said.
On a more personal note, Sankar said his aquaculture operation extends to 25 acres of land.
“I have been at this for three years and we are now breaking even. We should be able to move to fillet, but that is not happening yet. We expect some success soon,” he said.
He added that with some reorganizing of the fish farm and the employment of better technology, some progress is expected.
“We have the experience…in time we hope to see success,” he said.
The NAAG President reiterated once more that there is success to be got by being involved with aquaculture. After a long association with the rice industry, Sankar said the switch from rice to aquaculture has been beneficial.
“It is much easier with aquaculture…with rice when it is time to harvest you have to. When it rains you suffer losses. With aquaculture, when it rains you feed the fishes a little more and wait the rain out,” he said.
Good Indicators
Sankar said fish farming, being viewed as the country’s next big agricultural export, has received much attention from stakeholders in different sectors.
“We have received much support from the Government, and the President has made promises to help move aquaculture forward. Much more support is needed, but this is a good start. The Government is fully supportive of aquaculture,” he said.
At the National Fisher Folks Convention at the International Conference Centre, President Bharrat Jagdeo had promised an excavator to facilitate the digging of the fish ponds and a vehicle to assist with extension services.
Recent reports from NAAG indicated that market reports show that aquaculture is the world’s fastest growing food production enterprise, with growth rates of eight per cent per annum, coupled with projections for long term sustainability.
“The market is there,” Sankar posited.
Furthermore, Guyana is ideally suited to the commercial practice of warm water aquaculture: vast amounts of unpolluted freshwater resources, relatively large acreages of flat land, year round warm water temperatures, presence of suitable species for farming, suitable agriculture by-products for feed production, drainage and irrigation infrastructure and availability of unskilled family labour.
As of the last few years, Sankar explained that NAAG, in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and the United States Agency for International Development / Guyana Trade and Investment Support (USAID/GTIS) project, has been targeting aquaculture as a means of diversifying the future of Guyana’s agricultural economy.
However, he maintained that aqua-farming in Guyana dates back than 100 years.
History in Fish
The first reliable accounts of attempts at aquaculture in Guyana can be traced back to the early East Indian inhabitants of the Corentyne Coast near the Berbice River estuary. These persons, and their present day descendants, practice a type of aquaculture that takes advantage of natural tidal inflows during high tides. Sea water is allowed in and the juveniles– larvae and eggs of many brackish (salty) water species, including swamp shrimp, snook, cuffum and mullet– are trapped in coastal swamps or specially constructed ponds where they remain until they reach a marketable size.
In the 1940’s, freshwater aquaculture first started in Guyana. The government wanted farmers to try raising fish alongside other agricultural practices, such as in irrigated rice fields or flooded sugarcane fields, and introduced Mozambique tilapia to Guyana. But these ideas were pushed into the background as focus was turned to the potential of marine capture fisheries.
To explore this new idea of raising marine species, in the 1950’s, the Onverwagt Brackish Water Station was established, but due to a lack of government support, this facility declined, and was eventually abandoned altogether. The remnants of the ponds can still be seen today as one drives along the main road on the way to Rosignol.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that renewed interest was shown in freshwater aquaculture through the establishment of three stations by the Department of Fisheries and a joint International Development Research Center/Guyana Sugar Corporation venture. New fish species, including Nile Tilapia, Grass Carp and Red Swamp Crayfish, were introduced and attempts were also made to raise indigenous species such as hassar. The project given some impetus in the 1980s when the government stations supplied tilapia
for some 500 private ponds in Guyana. But this had no long-term success.
During the 1990s, several factors led to another renewed awareness of aquaculture. Guyana was experiencing difficulties in marketing traditional agricultural exports (rice and sugar) and shrimp yields were declining. Diversification studies were conducted and results pointed to aquaculture.
In 1997, Guyana’s National Development Strategy stated that aquaculture development should become a priority, because of its potential to positively impact social and economic development by creating jobs and generating income. In October, 1997, a Food and Agriculture Organization aquaculture specialist visited Guyana and worked with the Fisheries Department to outline proposals for aquaculture development; he recommended establishing a freshwater station.
The freshwater station became a reality in 2001, when the four-acre Mon Repos Aquaculture Station was custom-built to conduct research, produce fingerlings (small fish, roughly the size of a finger, used to stock aquaculture ponds) and provide training and information on site selection, pond preparations and farm management.
Beginning in 2004, the Food and Agriculture Organization introduced a project to Guyana that would, similar to the experiments of the 1940s, combine aquaculture with the production of rice by small farmers. In 2005, the Guyana Rice Producers Association also began a rice-fish project to improve the standards of living in rice farming communities. Both projects successfully introduced aquaculture to small rice and cash crop farmers, and resulted in tilapia being sold in local markets.
While the rice-fish projects were ongoing, Guyana once again began earnestly looking at aquaculture as a feasible agricultural sector. In 2005, the Inter-American Development Bank identified aquaculture as a sector for fast track development; in 2006, a tilapia market study, coupled with several feasibility studies, concluded that tilapia aquaculture would be a profitable economic venture for Guyana.
Aquaculture in Guyana has been morphing and evolving through the years, and the sector is now able to build upon past mistakes and successes while rapidly moving forward.
Looking to the past, it was recognized that a lack of public-private sector collaboration in aquaculture usually resulted in minimal progress that was often disjointed and uncoordinated. To remedy this, in 2006, the National Aquaculture Association of Guyana (NAAG) was formed by an eclectic group of private farmers, feed producers, fish processors, lending agencies, government bodies and donor groups.
The association meets weekly to collectively (and from many viewpoints) discuss a range of topics. One moment the conversation is about technical issues such as sexing fish and producing suitable feed, and the next it turns to identifying markets and transportation logistics. The partnership has been the main driving force for aquaculture development over the past year, and successes have been many.
With guidance and assistance provided by USAID/GTIS, the association has been focusing on a market-led strategy.
The general objective of NAAG is to ensure fish produced in Guyana is as competitive as fish produced in any part of the world.
Sankar said he is hopeful that aquaculture will be successful in Guyana.
Historical source: The National Aquaculture Association of Guyana (NAAG),