IN keeping with Guyana’s continuous efforts to advance development in the area of local and regional food security, the Ministry of Agriculture has partnered with the Bureau of Statistics to further enhance the existing farmers’ register with an agriculture module of the national census.

Planning Officer at the ministry, Natasha Beerjit, in a public advisory on the ministry’s Facebook page, said that the module will be used to guide the ministry in crafting its work programme for farming projects, infrastructural development, agriculture diversification programmes and to measure food security.

“By responding to this module, farmers and stakeholders have provided the ministry with the opportunity to use the data to guide policy interventions for farmers and other stakeholders in the agriculture sector,” Beerjit related.

She added that the agriculture module is one of the first steps in collecting baseline information on the sector. The module will also assist in the country’s ongoing efforts to reduce the Caribbean’s food-import bill by 25 per cent by the year 2025.

“It is the foundation for any support programme that we design and towards collecting more reliable and up to date, timely data on the agriculture sector,” Beerjit said.

She added: “The data will be used as means of verification during the implementation of the ministry of agriculture’s distribution programmes also.”

In August 2022, the ministry, through the Sustainable Agriculture Development Programme (SADP), launched its agriculture survey with the aim of creating a register.

The $20 million project, which is being funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), targetted the collection of data from approximately 4,000 farmers residing in Regions Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara), Four (Demerara-Mahaica), Five (Mahaica-Berbice), Six East Berbice-Corentyne), and Ten (Upper Demerara-Berbice).

Some 100 enumerators were trained to conduct visits to the homes and farms of farmers across the regions to conduct interviews.

Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha, had said that the pilot project will see the creation of a register of farmers, inclusive of what they produce, where they are located, and how much they are producing.

“This will help us to know who the farmers of our country are; to know where they are located, and the amount of crop they are producing,” Minister Mustapha had said at the time, and that the data being collected will also assist the government in crafting realistic policies and targetted projects to further develop the sector and the country.

“When we set programmes, especially in the agriculture sector, we have to be more realistic, because we are dealing with food and food security. And today, when the world is at a food crisis, in terms of food security, we have to be accurate in setting goals and setting our programmes,” the minister said.

Minister Mustapha said that without the proper data, the ministry is unable to establish and create targetted projects to assist stakeholders, and, as such, the survey is of much importance.