-in time for Christmas holidays
GUYANA’S livestock sector has over the years contributed significantly to the economy, with Government placing special emphasis on its expansion, in keeping with the Ministry of Agriculture’s ‘Grow More’ food campaign. The growth of the sector was further boosted yesterday as Agriculture Minister, Mr Robert Persaud distributed  a total of 160 breeding animals to livestock farmers under the Ministry’s Livestock Breed Improvement Programme.
The exercise, which saw the distribution of 100 sheep and 60 pigs, was done at the Ministry’s Regent and Vlissengen Roads office. The initiative cost the government approximately $10M, and among those who benefitted from it were some of those workers who were laid off by the Barama Company Ltd.
Minister Persaud, in brief remarks, said the programme is a continuation of the Ministry’s improvement of genetic stocks. The animals, which were acquired as a cost of $120,000 each, were imported from Suriname and the United States.
He said such a programme was necessary with the pig-rearing sector on the decline, which has put the farming and economic prosperity it has engendered over the years at considerable risk.
He also charged those farmers present with supporting others in the livestock sector in the expansion of their respective ventures, so as to contribute to the enhancement of the industry, which has been seeing enormous growth of late.
With the establishment on October 1 of the Guyana Livestock Authority, Minister Persaud said the entity will be working assiduously to ensure that production surpasses the country’s traditional sectors, these being rice and sugar.
“Over three years now,” he said, “I can boast that Guyana has not imported chicken, since we have been producing in a lump-sum to supply our own demand, as well as [the demand] regionally and internationally. We have also been commended recently by Grenada for the quality of beef we export.”
He said the Ministry has plans of looking at other ways in which it can lend support to farmers countrywide, getting them up to flock size so that, eventually, Guyana, the only country in the Caribbean region that can rightly boast of having food security, can become a major exporter of meat.
He said too that Government is currently in talks with investors, and has since injected US$1M into the construction of a veterinary lab, which is to commence shortly, and stressed the need for farmers to become better acquainted with proper animal health practices and guidelines as set out and requested by the Ministry.
The Ministry will also be commencing a programme shortly that will see veterinary officers holding clinics, whereby farmers will be taught the basic steps to proper care and manage their animals.
Eligible farmers were required to sign a contract with the Ministry under which the animals will be distributed. Under the contract, the farmers are required to give-back three of their animal offspring to the animal distribution programme, so the programme can continue. (GINA)