PLEASE grant me the privilege to respond to a letter in October 25, 2010 Stabroek News letter column (p.23) by Mr. Mervyn Williams M.P. One would have thought that since Mr. Williams is a Member of Parliament he would have been much wiser and not penned something like this since it would have immediate “backlash” on him. It’s Agriculture Month Mr. Williams and I think it is with lack of knowledge of what is happening in Guyana among others that would have caused you to write such a letter.
These days everything that happens globally is online so I can see where you got your international stats, not that it makes much of a difference, since we are not affected by it. Instead, the global food crisis is somewhat beneficial for us since we have a great chance of augmenting our local produce in regional and international markets. Now wouldn’t this be beneficial to our country Mr. Williams?
Mr. Williams made mention about the LFS Burnham Regime in the 1980’s and how some paper was presented to somewhere (not mentioned), hence, Mr. Burnham could have presented this paper to some persons sitting in the Botanical Gardens under a beautiful tree enjoying the afternoon sunset. We need facts Mr. Williams. If one were to carefully examine your letter like I did, and you were to be graded based on facts, you might get a big “duck egg” as we usually call it.
Since we are speaking of stats, I just want you to make a simple comparison as it relates to any of our traditional crops, let’s say rice and maybe one of our non-traditional crops, this time you can choose any that comes to your mind, but for the letter sake, I will use pumpkin; tell me, can you see the percentage export then (1980s) versus what the exports are today? One doesn’t need optical enhancement for such comparison. Also, when last you visited any of the agricultural institutions or even primary or secondary schools and more so the private sector enterprises in our country Mr. Williams? You speak of institutional involvement, you really need to move about this country; it’s totally different from the 1980’s.
And finally, people that are progressing in this field of agriculture would dare look back at those days when you had to line up for a cutlass and file. Progressive minds wish broader horizons Mr. Williams.