How unstable prices are owed to weather changes

THE complaints about the cost of living are a constant in people’s minds everywhere. Within the last few months, many notions and narratives have been dispersed regarding the increased cost of living. And one of the biggest complaints is the cost of greens in the market with rising prices for a bundle of bora and a slice of pumpkin being somewhat thinner than it used to be.

The Pepperpot Magazine ventured to the town and farming community of Anna Regina. There, the team spoke to a few vendors, and one in particular shared her opinion on why the prices are raised and why she believes this would not always be the case.

Oftentimes, a community revolves around its marketplace and the town of Anna Regina is no different. The Anna Regina market is one of the largest and most popular on the Essequibo Coast. Resting at the central point of the town, it is surrounded by all the necessary services the town has to offer. The township covers an estimated 78.5 square kilometres and the marketplace takes up a large percentage of that. With everything from food and clothes to mechanics and jewellers, the Anna Regina Market is a source of livelihood for many people.

Among those who come out to ply their trade daily is Gaitree Sukul. Gaitree and her husband have been vendors at the Anna Regina market for more than four decades. “Me and my husband have been selling here for nearly 40 years. It has been a long time we are selling here. It has been a very long time,” Gaitree stated. “At first, we sold things like slippers. At first, we did not have anything to depend on. But it is not every day that people will buy footwear because people do not need footwear every day. So, we started selling vegetables.”

But they have also faced their fair share of issues in selling greens. Like any other field of work, Gaitree and her husband have strategies in their work. She explained that what is sold is largely dependent on what is being bought. “We work with the season,” she said, “When it is Christmas, we sell Christmas things. We sell apples and grapes. When Easter comes, we sell kites, and when Diwali comes, we sell diyas,” Gaitree explained.

Business is a constantly shifting field and requires business owners to adapt to the changes. In the early years of Gaitree’s business, sales and customers seemed far more stable. “Business used to go a lot. But nowadays, business is really slow,” Gaitree stated. She attributed this change to the rising prices of greens, which has driven customers away from the market.

“The greens have gotten expensive and I find that people are not buying as much,” she stated. As the nation searches for answers as to why the price of vegetables has been on the rise, Gaitree and fellow vendors like her, who bring foods from the farm to be placed on our table, say that the price of greens is owed to climate change. As Gaitree explained, the change in weather has and the farming of particular crops difficult. As a result, farmers are forced to exhaust resources to get crops that grew far easier some twenty or even thirty years ago.

“Greens have gotten so expensive because of the weather. A lot of farmers are not getting enough water,” Gaitree stated. And the added cost farming requires in recent times is also reflected in crop prices by the time they reach market vendors. “Like with the dry weather, the farmers had to pump water, and they had to pay for the gas and so on,” Gaitree said.

This factor has caused Gaitree and her husband to stop farming. Instead, they have turned to simply buying and reselling. This, too however, has its own host of issues and competition. “Sometimes you may find a little bit of greens being sold expensive and some people sell it cheap. We are buying to sell it back. And we have to make at least a profit,” Gaitree explained.

In taking a walk around the Anna Regina market, there are certain sentiments that all the vendors share. Gaitree and numerous other people admit that there are bad days and good days. As they go out everyday, it is impossible to say whether or not they will have customers or not. But they are also determined to continue, regardless of the issues faced in the daily struggle to provide goods for their customers.