THE Inter-American Institute for Co-operation on Agriculture (IICA) will soon be establishing commodity chains dialogue platforms for farmers, buyers and input providers in the cassava and small ruminants sector in an ongoing programme to create linkages which will contribute to enterprise development within the two sectors.This was revealed Monday during a validation seminar of a recently-concluded value chain analysis of the two products conducted by the IICA under the auspices of the European Union funded Agricultural Policy Program (APP) of the 10th European Development Fund (EDF).
The value chain analysis done over a period of six months had aimed at identifying reference points for improving organisational and entrepreneurial marketing capacities, developing the domestic marketing information and intelligence systems and devising financing schemes to support the development of producers, particularly women and youth   within the two sectors.

Monday’s validation seminar at the Regency Suites in Hadfield Street, Georgetown was done as a follow-up to the value chains analyses and gave participants, including farmers and representatives of farmers’ associations, the opportunity to validate and enrich the findings for the benefit of the APP support for the two sectors which will follow.
The programme included remarks by Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, Ambassador/Head of the European Union (EU) delegation in Guyana Robert Kopecky, Programme Manager Agriculture and Industry, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat Miss Nisa Surujbally and Technical Coordinator of the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), Dr Mario Fortune.
Selwyn Anthony who served as the National Value Chain Co-ordinator presented an update on the status of the value chain work while Mr Robert Reid, International Business Specialist in Agri-business and Coordinator of the IICA component of the APP Project, delivered a regional update on the project.

Minister Ramsammy told the participants that Guyanese farmers invest more than $50B a year in their productive activities.

“The small farmers have been doing a great job but we the technicians and the policy makers must create the partnership, the market linkages, the technology transfer, the enabling policy environment that are absolutely necessary so that the producers can remain focused on continuous improvement of their businesses.”

He hailed the value chain analyses of cassava and small ruminants as well as other crops to be targeted as critical to the transformation of agriculture, necessary to give Guyana and countries in the Region a fair chance to develop to high middle income status.

Ambassador Kopecky disclosed that under programming of the 11th EDF Caribbean Regional Programme, a draft Caribbean Indicative Programme covering the 2014-2020 period, with a global allocation of 346 million Euros, has been recently agreed between CARIFORUM and the EU.

The Programme is expected to be officially adopted in Brussels on 10th and 11th June 2015.

Under the 11th EDF, he assured, it will be possible to consolidate the results to be achieved under the current co-operation of the 10th one which incorporated the APP project.

He pledged that the EU will continue its co-operation with the Caribbean Region in the key sector of agriculture and increasingly put the emphasis on crucial issues such as the sustainability (social and environmental) of agriculture, and the quality of the agricultural products.

Reid disclosed that similar value chains analyses and validations had been done in all fifteen CARIFORUM countries.

He said that IICA has as a result acquired a massive data base of producers, buyers and input providers and was in a better position to move forward with the stated objective of better  linking producers to markets both local, regional and international.

During an interactive session based on the updates of Reid and Anthony, participants validated the value chain analysis reports and their recommendations.

They also identified a number of constraints to production and were assured by the organisers that their observations and recommendations will form part of the final report which will shape the form of the EU APP assistance for the two sectors, which will follow.