THE accession to office of the Hon Zulfikar Mustapha as Minister of Agriculture has turned out to be an inspired choice in the assembling of the new Cabinet. Minister Mustapha has been proactive in reforming, developing and strengthening the agricultural milieu he inherited and introducing new crops, technology and techniques. Sugar and rice, traditional crops, have been revived and expanded; fishing is being modernised; new crops such as tropical wheat and millet and corn and soya have been introduced and indeed, the first crops of corn and soya have been successfully reaped.

The raison d’etre of this agricultural drive is to ensure that the food security of the nation, to keep on strengthening agriculture, which had always been the backbone of the economy and not to neglect it in favour of the new and lucrative oil industry as so many oil-producing countries have done and eventually became a victim of the Dutch Disease; and to take advantage of the $6 billion CARICOM food-export market. It is only very recently that the ministry has brought honey production within its full focus and has publicly committed itself to expanding and modernising the industry.

Honey is one of the oldest foods known to mankind and has been continuously used since the New Stone Age. All the ancient civilisations, the Egyptians, Indians, Chinese and others have used honey. It has always been an element in the food of the Gods, whether it was as ambrosia, nectar or any other. It was always regarded as a health-giving food and was also used medicinally, both internally and externally and later found its way into Western Pharmacopeia at the time western medicine entered its modern phase of development. In the Caribbean, from the time of slavery and in the Amerindian cultures, it was used as a cure for coughs and colds and as a pain reliever.

In very early times, bees were never hived or cultivated and honey was reaped or gathered from nests of wild bees. Though this is still done, today, bees are generally cultivated in hives and honey is reaped methodically. In Greek and Roman times, honey cultivation was done as a hobby and an industry. For example, the great Latin poet Virgil cultivated bees in his retirement, and he has immortalised his career as a beekeeper in poetry.

All honeys are not exactly the same. For example, in the Himalayas, because the bees feed on Lotus lilies, the honey is pink, or in parts of Africa, a green honey is produced. These rarer types of honey are far more expensive. Modern honey farmers are able to produce honey with various flavours. A common example is orange-blossom honey, whereby the hives are moved near orange groves when they begin to flower.

In Guyana, honey has been produced from the earliest colonial times by using hives. The honey would reflect the vegetation of the locality where the hives were situated. In areas where sugarcane was grown, such as the sugar estates, the honey produced tended to be distinctly sugary, while the honey produced by bees which lived near mangrove areas, the honey produced tended to be more “traditional.” Guyana honey, therefore, is not of a consistent standard and very little of it is exported. Indeed, much of the honey sold in supermarkets is imported. The Ministry of Agriculture has now brought honey into focus and embarked upon a programme to modernise the local honey industry and expand its production. Cuba has proffered the necessary aid to do this.

Cuba is well-fitted to do this since it has a modern honey industry and exports more than 10,000 tons annually, mostly to Europe. The Ministry of Agriculture has been focusing on the economic advantages of expanding a modernised honey industry, such as providing more employment and developing a new export crop. There are, however, other significant benefits a modernised honey industry would bring to Guyana and these would include expanding the use of honey as a food among the population, developing laboratory facilities to accurately test the quality of honey since at the moment, there are no such facilities; and third, working out ways in which to deal with the Africanised bees, since they are believed to have overtaken the Capilano and could cause unusual problems to beekeepers. These three areas must be considered when developing the Guyana honey industry.