PRESIDENT, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, has said that his administration is examining the possibility of growing wheat in Guyana. This is indeed innovative and out-of-the-box thinking on the part of President Ali.

Guyana has always been an importer of wheat, except for a brief period when wheat was banned by the Forbes Burnham regime after the country found itself in a serious foreign exchange crisis due mainly to economic mismanagement and undemocratic rule. Several other basic consumer items were also banned, resulting in a parallel underground economy which, at one time, was believed to be larger than the formal economy.

Guyana is facing a sudden increase in the price of wheat on the world market, but for an entirely different reason than was the case under the PNC regime when there was an acute shortage of foreign exchange to buy basic food items.

It has to do principally with the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed by western nations on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. This is having a disruptive impact on the supply chain, which was already disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Russia and Ukraine are among the largest producers of wheat, accounting for nearly 30 per cent of global supply.

For decades, we were led to believe that wheat cannot be grown in tropical climate such as ours and hardly any effort was made to conduct research to examine the possibility of growing wheat in Guyana.

Following an announcement by President Ali that the government is seeking to find a variety of wheat that can be planted in Guyana, the Ministry of Agriculture has commenced research to identify the variety of wheat that will be able to withstand Guyana’s tropical conditions. And, according to Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha, the results, so far, have been promising.

It is an established fact that wheat grows best in moderate temperature although it also needs lot of sunshine especially when the grains are filling. China is the world’s largest producer of wheat, followed by India, Russia and the United States.

It does not follow, however, especially in light of the huge advances in bio-engineering and research and development, that the cultivation of wheat in Guyana cannot become economically viable. In neighboring Brazil, roughly half of the wheat consumed by the population in the form of bread and pastries is produced locally. Currently, Brazil consumes about 12 million tonnes of wheat a year but produces only seven million, with the remainder imported from Russia and Argentina.

Necessity, it is said, is the mother of invention and with wheat prices now literally hitting the roof, the need to examine the possibility of growing our own wheat is becoming paramount. President Ali has said that he is committed to building a Guyana that is resilient and such a move is a positive step in that direction.

Food is already in short supply and, according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI), hunger is on the increase in several parts of the world, giving rise to a dire need for assistance to avert malnutrition and deaths. This is especially true for countries such as Somalia, Yemen and the Central African Republic where thousands of people including children are dying of hunger.

In Somalia, which is now ranked as the “hungriest” country in the world due in part to famine, but mainly to civil unrest and political instability with almost 60 per cent of the population malnourished and 31.9 per cent of the children stunted, child mortality is almost 12 per cent.

According to United Nations data, 165 million children worldwide are too small for their age or stunted due to chronic malnutrition. The latest World Food Programme data showed that 690 million people cannot meet their daily food requirements; this is roughly one out of every nine people in the world. The situation is particularly severe in Yemen, where the ongoing conflict has resulted in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. In 2019, the United Nations declared Yemen the world’s largest food security crisis that was driven mainly by conflict.

These are indeed depressing statistics but as pointed out by UN Secretary-General, Antonio Gutteres, while every day hundreds of millions of people go to bed hungry, nearly one-third of the food that is produced is lost or wasted. The situation is made even worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and now wheat shortages due to the ongoing war in the Ukraine.

Fortunately for us in Guyana, we have a President that is passionate about food security not only in Guyana but in the region as a whole. President Ali is the lead Head of Government with responsibility for Agriculture in CARICOM. And in the fulfilment of that role, he has been leading from the front. He has placed agriculture and food security on the front-burner.

According to the President, it remains a travesty that our region, blessed with arable lands, abundant freshwater supplies and skilled agricultural workers, imports more than US$5 billion annually.

“We have the means to slash original food import bill, produce more of the food we consume and, in the process, generate sustainable livelihoods through agriculture,” the President posited.

The decision taken by President Ali to explore the possibility of growing wheat in Guyana could become a game-changer from the standpoint of agricultural development and food security in Guyana and, for that matter, the region as a whole, especially at this time of food shortages and rising food prices. This is indeed forward-looking thinking for which President Ali must be commended.