AGRICULTURE, which is the backbone of our economy, over the last decade, has expanded at a high rate and today we have become self-sufficient in food production and a food-exporting nation.
This has been achieved through sound agricultural policies and programmes; heavy emphasis on drainage and irrigation and the education, dedication and resilience of our farmers, who endure great risks and sacrifice in ensuring that wholesome food, are on our tables.
However, in the current global phenomenon of climate change, the risks that farmers are exposed to are even greater and therefore it has become an imperative to implement measures to help them adapt to current weather trends.
In this regard, it is good to see that the Ministry of Agriculture is already moving in this direction which shows that those who are in charge of our agriculture sector are forward thinking and are taking serious consideration of the welfare of farmers.
Recently the Ministry of Agriculture, in collaboration with the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission, handed over close to 160 leases for farmlands in the Pomeroon and along the Essequibo Coast, as government continues apace with initiatives that would see the agriculture sector adapt to climate change. The lands distributed by way of leases as part of the Essequibo Land Development Project, are located in the high elevations, making them less susceptible to flooding.
The communities in which the land was distributed were Siriki and Warapana in the Pomeroon, and at Paradise on the Essequibo Coast. The ministry worked with farmers’ groups in the area who produced a list of persons interested in being a part of the project
According to the FAO, agriculture is a source of climate change but also a solution to climate change if adequate, sustainable production measures are adopted that hold substantial mitigation potential, and that contribute to adapting agriculture and food production systems to extreme events, rising temperatures, and increasing CO2 concentration.

To adapt to climate change farmers will need to broaden their crops genetic bases and use new cultivars and crop varieties. They will need to adopt sustainable agronomic practices such as shift in sowing/planting dates, use of cover crop, live mulch and efficient management of irrigation and reduce the vulnerability of soil-based agricultural production systems through the management of soil fertility, reduced tillage practices and management of the cycle of soil organic carbon more efficiently in grasslands and cropping systems. There will be a need to monitor pathogens, vectors and pests and assessing how well natural population control is working.
Despite technological advances such as improved crop varieties and irrigation systems, weather and climate are still key factors in agricultural productivity. For example, weak monsoon rains in 1987 caused large shortfalls in crop production in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, contributing to reversion of wheat importation by India and Pakistan (World Food Institute, 1988). The 1980s also saw the continuing deterioration of food production in Africa, caused in part by persistent drought and low production potential, and international relief efforts to prevent widespread famine. The effects of climate on agriculture in individual countries cannot be considered in isolation. Agricultural trade has grown dramatically in recent decades and now provides significant increments of national food supplies to major importing nations and substantial income for major exporting nations (Table 1). These examples emphasise the close links between agriculture and climate; the international nature of food trade and food security; and the need to consider the impacts of climate change in a global context.( Rosenzweig, C., M. L. Parry, G. Fischer, and K. Frohberg. 1993. Climate change and world food supply. Research Report No. 3. Oxford: University of Oxford, Environmental Change Unit.)
Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud, exhorting farmers on the serious implications, stressed: “Those of you who live in the Pomeroon would know what the high tides do. You know what happens when there is a lot of rainfall.”. He said that they would know of the experience of the effects of climate change despite the works they might do to empolder their lands.
“We cannot give up. In Guyana’s situation, we are blessed with abundant land and we have much more abundant fertile land on the coast. That is why our government, in a very strategic way, have been looking at how it is we can help communities to adapt and adjust to the effects of climate change, and your community in the Pomeroon River is the first community in which we have deliberately put aside resources so that we can develop land in the high reaches and make you less vulnerable. This is not forced relocation. We don’t believe in doing so. But we want you to have the option of moving to higher lands.”