He said GMC will provide additional support to farmers to advance their skills and make them better business people.
Hussain said GMC facilitates markets and linkages; provides packing and transport facilities through its pack house and refrigerated trucks and information on market movements. The Government corporation continues to work assiduously to promote the cultivation and export of Guyana’s non-traditional agricultural produce to regional and extra-regional markets, he reiterated.
Director of the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI), Dr. Oudho Homenauth, who was also at the meeting, stated that, in continuing collaborations with the farmers, one important thing is feedback.
“Feedback is important so that we can assist in improvement,” he said.
Homenauth said, while farmers have heard about the Agriculture Diversification Programme (ADP), of importance is for them to understand the role it plays as it relates to export markets.
The ADP is being funded by the Inter-American Development Bank at cost of US$21.9M, with counterpart funding of US$1.1M from the Government of Guyana, with the objective of increasing exports of non-traditional agricultural commodities and establishing services and institutions for a sustainable increase in the income derived.
Homenauth said that, with the necessary feedback, organisations like NARI can assist in improving operations and help better place farmers for trading on the export market.
He acknowledged that there will be challenges with marketing but noted that, where there are difficulties, farmers must look at value-added.
Homenauth said the value-added chain focuses on the product from research and post harvest to agro-processing and, essentially, looks at it through different stages to market every component.
The bottom line is enhancing the delivery of services to the farmers, he stated.