THE SCARCITY of ground provisions has resulted in astronomical prices for their acquisition, in accordance with the law of supply and demand.
Consumers purchasing from market or other vendors are finding their pockets way too shallow to stock up on the creole favourites of plantains, cassavas, eddoes, sweet potatoes and yams.
A recent survey of prices in the Georgetown markets has revealed that plantains were retailing for as much as $140 per pound.  Though prices vary depending on location, plantains still average over $100 per pound wherever one shopped.
“I used to cook ground provisions up to three times a week,” one housewife told this newspaper. “But now it is way cheaper to cook rice, or
buy flour to make bakes.”
“I can’t tell de las day I eat metem,” a Wales, West Bank Demerara resident told this paper when we caught up with him.
“Is a shame dat local ground provisions cost as high as imported potatoes,” remarked Pat, an East Coast Demerara resident shopping in the
Stabroek Market. “We never see de prices of provisions so high,” a 63-year-old grandmother from West Ruimveldt, Georgetown, remarked.

Eliciting vendors’ responses to these comments from complaining consumers, we were told by ‘Bird Man’, a ground provision vendor operating at the back of the Stabroek Market, that vendors have to pay as much as $90 per pound for plantains now, compared with just $35 per pound last year.

Everton Gibson, a farmer and logger from the Essequibo Coast, informed this paper that an epidemic of disease is presently ravishing plantain and banana plants.  “The plants are rotting from the root,” Gibson said. “The leaves then get dry and the plants eventually die.”
Gibson was referring to what is known on the coast as ‘dry leaf disease’, which affects plantain and banana plants.   
Farmers say that they suffer great losses from this disease.  The scarcity of plantains is therefore blamed on the ‘dry leaf’ epidemic. The scarcity of cassavas and eddoes is said to be due to the weather.  “The excessive rainfall kill out a lot o de cassava,” one Mahaica farmer disclosed.  During last
year, the price of cassava took an appreciable dive, causing the item to be retailed for as low as between $30 and $40 per pound.  This situation,
according to vendors and farmers, caused some people to leave their cassava in the fields rather than endure the trouble of reaping and transporting them to market to sell for such low prices.  The result
was a return to a situation of scarcity of cassava and high prices. Now cassava retails for about $80 per pound.

Agriculture Ministry officials in the Crops Division confirm reports of the widespread problem of dry leaf disease. They also posit that extremes in the weather pattern affecting Guyana in recent years have also contributed to scarcity of not only ground provisions,
but greens as well.

So, at least for the immediate future, the Guyanese consumer will have to “cut the eyes” on ground provisions in the market.  Fried plantains, dry food, and provision soup will continue to be scarce items on
Guyanese tables.