This year, during the festive season, navigating between household chores, shopping and organising meals, getting everything just right for Christmas, Boxing Day, and the New Year is quite hectic.

It is often a hassle to source meat from the right place instead of joining the long lines at the markets or queueing up at the supermarkets or butcher shops for your turn to make a purchase.
Seeking to fill that gap, the Guyana School of Agriculture (GSA), is selling meat for Christmas as part of their annual seasonal activities.

The variety includes well-seasoned, packaged meats for cook-up, smoked pork ham, chicken ham, pickled pork, salted beef, and garlic pork.
The initiative is a partnership between the Ministry of Agriculture – Guyana IICA Delegation in Guyana IICA, Guyana National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute, Guyana Marketing Corporation, Guyana Rice Development Board, Guyana Livestock Development Authority, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) to make the choice cuts of Christmas meats available.

GSA is encouraging Guyanese to unwrap the joy of flavour this Christmas with GSA Foods festive cook-up meat mix. Manager of the GSA’s Agro-Processing Unit, Stacia McDonald, explained that the promotion is also accompanied by its Gift Baskets promotion which started seven years ago, with all the products produced by GSA Agro-Processing Department
The baskets include porridge, banana flour, breadfruit flour (in powered form), condiments, golden apple BBQ sauce, preserved carambola, and all-purpose seasonings.

In her day-to-day responsibilities, McDonald creates all the solutions for the meats in her unit and also sees it through the curing process, after which she packages the meats after weighing them for sale. The meats are stored in freezers until they get sold, and they are always fresh and wholesome.

The GSA is a large compound that houses several buildings and farms and has different sections, including classrooms and dormitories.
It has a livestock farm, agro-processing facility, Crop Farm 1 and Crop Farm 2 and it is selling fresh meats, cow’s milk and other products to the public, especially at this time of the year as we usher in the holidays.

The GSA was opened to fulfill a need for specialised National Agricultural Training. The Agro-Processing sector is necessary to Guyana’s development and food security.
The Agro-Processing Facility at GSA creates a direct connection between the industry and the agricultural sector, which possesses high growth potential since a lot is being pumped into agriculture.

It is of the hope it will enhance its scope on a wide range of merchandise with the anticipation of an increase in food production and a corresponding increase in the consumption of value-added food products locally produced.

As a direct result of changing diet and food habits, there is an increase in value-added food products and at GSA, they are producing high-quality products that are market-ready at an affordable price.

GSA provides in-training in value-added commodities to the Diploma in Agriculture and Certificate in Agriculture Programmes by implementing courses in Food Science and Agro Processing.
In addition, the department provides intense training to the students involved in Agro-Processing Programme who are expected to enter the Food Processing Industry. During their courses, these students cover a wide range of food safety and preservation techniques in adding value to commodities.