The Jagdeo initiative on agriculture did not emerge out of a vacuum, but evolved from a childhood where he witnessed his industrious mother help feed the family and augment the family income with produce from her kitchen garden. He also helped her and knows first-hand that food you grow yourself is fresher, tastier, and if grown organically, healthier.
Our ancestors came to these shores because of agriculture. The indigenous people lived off the land. When our foreparents left the sugar estates they subsisted on produce from their farms, and they thrived.
The bounties of the earth produced the income to educate the first batch of doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. Certainly Dr. Cheddi Jagan’s mother, like President Jagdeo’s, had her own kitchen garden.
Schools need to introduce into their curriculum a more dynamic agricultural programme. This can achieve several things as follows: Provide income for the respective schools; encourage and inculcate in children an appreciation and a love for farming as a part of a skills development programme; and introduce a dynamic that would see a greater number of young people opting to till the land instead of leaving for seemly greener pastures overseas.
Many children buy junk for lunch, but the Government is now subsidizing a programme where one balanced meal a day is provided for children, along with either a glass of milk, or a glass of juice. This initiative could propel an entire transformation in the educational sector, as vegetables, milk, eggs, chicken and fruits for juice could probably come from the school farm initiative – something along the lines of a 4H programme.  We have come far from the day when a child who suffered an accident on Main Street, whereby her lunchkit fell open to reveal a piece of dried coconut that she had been provided by her mother for her lunch. 

Government’s initiatives geared to ensure Guyana’s children are well-nourished will certainly produce a healthier population, which could enhance learning ability and reduce instances of illness in children and produce healthier and more pro-active adults.
An agricultural school programme could also provide productive physical recreation so that children do not remain desk-bound all day and put many scientific subjects taught in school on a practical footing. Children could also be given “homework” where they could be encouraged to grow plants in unused vessels, such as old buckets, pots, etc., with a prize or a grade awarded during term tests or annual exams.
The scourge of drugs is prevalent and parents whose children fall prey become helpless victims as a result, but there sustainable programmes that could help these children find salvation and save these families from devastation.
The Guyana National Service (GNS) had many positive aspects and if it had been run by an incorrupt administration, without fear of molestation and outright rape by senior administrators, it may have been a success story.
Many young persons lead aimless lives and get into mischief as a result, so a programme along the lines of GNS, where discipline goes hand-in-hand with education and production, could very well provide the answer to the dilemma of parents with recalcitrant and uncontrollable children.
Many homeowners cover their yards completely with concrete because they cannot recognize the beauty and the bounties that the Lord provided in the earth he gifted to us.
Hindus call earth Dharti Maa, in recognition that the earth is like a mother who provides sustenance to her offsprings, so rather than desecrating her by dumping garbage all over her we should appreciate her nurturing bounties instead.
Many persons who cry marginalization and poverty have large tracts of land at their disposal, which they have abandoned to weeds. They prefer to beg and bully, and instill in their children these same traits rather that cultivate produce and rear livestock that can provide an income and food for their tables
The president is a prime example that one need not become criminal and rob other people of their possessions with the excuse of minimal income because his mother taught him a primary but quintessential lesson – that if you till the land to feed yourself, then you can aspire, not merely to dream, but to climb the mountains and achieve the heights.
Many who leave this country thinking that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence find concrete jungles instead, and that those who inhabit those concrete jungles pine for land that provides immense agricultural opportunities such as Guyana.
The Jagdeo Initiative is not merely the product of a president’s brilliant and innovative mind, but is also a mother’s legacy of love. Indeed, it is the legacy that all our foreparents bequeathed this nation.