Every farmer must be registered in the new agriculture trajectory towards a formal sector in which contracts between producers and buyers are the norm, and fresh or processed products meet all the requirements of the export market.AGRICULTURE Minister Dr. Leslie Ramsammy recently outlined his vision for the new approach to agriculture, stressing that merely growing food for local consumption is no longer enough.

He said: “If we produce only for Guyana and the supermarkets in Guyana, we will never generate the kind of wealth that we need. We have to address the issue of exporting our food, either in a fresh or processed state.

“We have to look beyond the market of 750,000-odd people in Guyana (and) see a market of 10 million people of the Caribbean, or of thirty to forty million people in northern Brazil,” the minister said.

He said that registration of farmers will satisfy the traceability requirements of buyers in regional and international markets.

“In the new agricultural paradigm, the registration of our producers will assure buyers that they can trace the origin of the specific produce back to the farm where it is produced, in the event that problems are encountered with it, and so make it purchasable,” he said.
Traceability Bill
He disclosed that the Ministry of Agriculture has prepared a Traceability Bill to introduce traceability laws in Guyana. This is now being vetted by the Attorney General’s Chambers for eventual presentation to Parliament shortly.

He urged all farmers’ organisations to ensure that every farmer in Guyana is registered, since this is the main means by which Guyanese farmers will be able to overcome the export issues which currently prevail.

He also disclosed that, very soon, with support from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the Ministry of Agriculture will convene a meeting of all large and small producers to conduct an audit of the resources available for meeting export market requirements for local agricultural produce.

He said he believes that there is local expertise available for putting in place the systems that are necessary for attaining the standards required by regional and international buyers.

He stressed that, in the evolving situation, contract farming will have to become the norm, so that farmers can be protected. “We cannot have situations where people order products and, when these are harvested and ready for sale, they never show up to complete the transaction,” he stated.
He noted that Guyanese farmers produce much more than Guyanese can ever eat, and a way needs to be found to ensure that the farmers are not investing in vain.

The new trajectory also comprises emerging technology, and other aspects – such as new regulations, marketing, storage, and transport – also have to be seriously addressed.

He noted that, in another time, when he was a child, the goal was to support subsistence livelihood; but, he said, that cannot be the goal today. “The struggles are different now. We need to create wealth, not simply to find food.

“We must develop agriculture in a way that generates wealth for the practitioners,” he challenged.
He emphasised that the ‘Grow More Food’ campaign is continuing, but with a different orientation. This campaign, he said, must direct its attention to the fact that Guyana imports huge amounts of food items that can be grown locally.

“We can grow these in Guyana; reduce the costs of these, and provide entrepreneurial and employment opportunities for our people. We can also turn those things we produce in Guyana into valued agro-processed materials as processed value-added products.”

Important factories
To this end, he disclosed, in the next two weeks, the Ministry of Agriculture will launch two important factories, one at Providence on the East Bank of Demerara, and one in the Essequibo. Those factories will be making high-quality, well packaged products with plantains, sweet potatoes, cassava, bananas and other produce.

He said: “These are the things we will have to do to transform agriculture; to ensure it generates wealth; to ensure that the youth take up agriculture as a worthwhile profession, and end the myth that the only people who go into agriculture are those who cannot make it in school.”
By Clifford Stanley