AGRICULTURE Minister Zulfikar Mustapha informed Parliament this week during the debate on the national budget that this country will develop a great agriculture sector, with the Chronicle reporting that the minister wants to see Guyana become an “agricultural powerhouse”, with a strong, sturdy farming and agro-processing industry that serves the purpose of providing Guyanese with food security at all times, even acting as a cushion for the nation against times of challenges, and that generates jobs across the country, especially in rural areas, and that helps the public with national nutritional requirements.

With its rich, fertile, vast swaths of land all along the coastal belt, and also in parts of the hinterland, Guyana’s soul pulsates to the heartbeat of its agriculture-friendly land, with the Guyanese people emerging out of sugar plantations and rice fields as slaves and poor labourers in the colonial system, to today own their own paradise under the tropical sun. Throughout its history, this country has looked to the land for its sustenance and growth and development. Out of the land comes not only the wealth of the gold and mining sector, but the food and nutrition that are so basic to survival. At one time, Guyana’s biggest dream was to become the breadbasket of the Caribbean, and to see every corner of the country planted with thriving kitchen gardens.

Today, the nation aims for bigger industrial scale development, and so the minister sets out to build a sector that serves a deeper purpose, one that is refined and ready to take on big investments, both local and foreign, that sees scaled-up dynamic activities in the fisheries, livestock, cash-crop, and rice and sugar sub-sectors.
These sections already do relatively well, and they have survived whatever economic travails the country has had to face, including suspension placed on exports, with the fisheries sector particularly resilient, but also livestock doing well, with the poultry industry always able to rebound from shocks. Minister Mustapha laid out the sad decline of the entire agriculture sector over the five years from 2015 to 2020, but he announced the good news that the sector is overcoming those years fast, and is already seeing growth across all areas.

Minister Mustapha stands out for the visionary role he takes on, for the sector over which he presides is Guyana’s heart and soul. In his approach to the sugar industry, and in his interaction with the public across the country, and in his big thinking about the possibilities of Guyana’s agricultural potential, the minister exercises a leadership confidence that would inspire farmers and entrepreneurs in the agricultural space with deep motivation to apply their shoulders to the wheel and ramp up Guyana’s reputation on the global scene as a food producer of excellence, with ripe opportunities for international partnerships and local participation, especially local farmers partnering with diaspora entrepreneurs.

Such is the blessedness of this awesome land that Guyanese call the homeland, that among the nations of the world this country could choose to position its agriculture sector to be a global player, and focus only on that, and yet succeed. With the lay of the land, abundant water sources, rich fishing prospects, the tropical sun warming the fields and the rainy season bringing luscious freshness to the greenery, and livestock roaming across fine savannah flatlands in Berbice and the Abary and Essequibo and Leguan and Wakenaam, that even were Guyana to focus on developing its agricultural riches alone, with good governance and social justice for the people who work the land, as this government demonstrates with real teeth and concrete actions, such as tax breaks and incentives, this fascinating country would still dominate the Caribbean and this part of the Americas.

The oil-and-gas sector commands a lot of attention these days, because it serves as an existential catalyst for rapid scaling up of the nation’s socioeconomic well-being. The mining sector and forestry always played a major role in the economy. The wider agricultural potential seems to historically fall into a kind of taken-for-granted state, with the livestock and poultry sections historically garnering a bit more attention than cash crops, apart from sugar and rice. But Guyanese built this country on the backs of hard-working sugar and rice cultivators and kitchen-garden families. Guyana’s soul comes wrapped up in its tilling of the land, in its intimate relationship with agriculture.

As Agriculture Minister, the most joyous job in the government falls into the lap of Minister Mustapha, and it is heart-gladdening to see that he tackles the task with clear-sighted commitment, a heart of energetic passion, and a deep desire to see farmers and workers in the agriculture sector rise to a status of respect and love across the country. Every Guyanese knows what joy and peace settle on the heart when moving across the coastal belt, seeing rolling acres of rice fields and sugar cane fields and cattle and horses grazing in open pastures under the hot sun, or on a light tropical rainy day, the beauty of the Guyana landscape enriching the soul with its agricultural layout providing an aesthetic peace, and also solid food security.

As the nation becomes a global star in the oil-and-gas sector, and as macroeconomic development ramps up to developed-world status, it is with great contentment that one considers the words of Minister Mustapha in Parliament this week during the budget debate. It is the most wonderful sight to see thriving farms, fresh lush fruits and vegetables harvested off the local land feeding the nation, and those amazing pastures stretching from coast to coast where cattle graze in calm, peaceful content under the Guyana sun. Agriculture would always be the nation’s cradle, an assured solid foundation with such on-the-ground heart-leadership as Minister Mustapha is providing for the agriculture sector.