OVER the last four years, the agricultural sector, under the leadership of the Minister of Agriculture, Hon. Zulfikar Mustapha, has been experiencing a veritable revolution. One aspect of this revolution has been the introduction of new crops and upgrading various farm animals such as poultry, cows, and pigs.
The underlying motivation of this Agricultural Revolution is the commitment to achieving food security for Guyana and the Caribbean Region, to raise the nutritional intake levels of the population and to eliminate the 6 billion dollars the Region annually spends on food imports by producing these same foods locally.
One of the new crops introduced is Millet. One thousand three hundred acres of Millet are under cultivation at the Tacama Mega Farm on the Berbice River and the acreage would be further expanded in Regions Five, Nine and Ten. India is the major millet producer and user in the world and does most of the scientific and social research on grain. The Ministry of Agriculture has cultivated a very fruitful relationship with the Indian authorities, thus ensuring the orderly success of the project.”
Millet is among the first cereals cultivated by human beings. It is found in all the ancient civilizations from the New Stone Age and remained the most used cereal in the world until about 50 or 60 years ago. At that time, rice and wheat cultivation had increased their productivity manyfold and became cheaper and State authorities, in many cases, promoted their use. Millet use and cultivation were left to the poorer classes, who continued to use it. The aura grew about it; it was the food of the poor and underprivileged, while wheat and rice unjustly came to be regarded as desirable cereals. With the advancement of research, it is now known that Millet is nutritionally superior to both Rice and Wheat. Millet is high in nutrition and dietary fibre and is a good source of protein, micronutrients and phytochemicals and is gradually being restored to its rightful place.
Millets can be ground into flour or consumed whole, like rice, and there are hundreds of recipes for them. It could be used for cakes, bread, roti, porridges and confections and remains among the most versatile of cereals. Rice and wheat are normally grown on irrigated land, which involves the cost of water, while Millet is grown on rain-watered land and is easily adapted to hot and dry climatic conditions and poor or marginal soils, and its cultivation is, therefore, more economical.
In this regard, Millet could be a great social and economic benefit to Haiti since a great part of that country’s land had become infertile and marginal with careless use over the 18th and 19th centuries. The Guyana Consumers Association had written the CARICOM Secretariat to consider measures to have Millet introduced to Haiti, and this could be done in tandem with Guyana’s programme with possible assistance from the Government of India.
The President, H.E. Dr Irfaan Ali has shown a special interest in the introduction of Millet to Guyana and the Caribbean and participated virtually in the Global Millet Conference in New Delhi which was in conjunction with the United Nations’ declaration of 2023 being the International Year of Millets. In his presentation at the Conference, Dr Ali remarked: “The declaration of this International Year (IYM) is linked to the recognition that hunger and food insecurity are potent threats to the attainment of the sustainable development goals . . . Guyana has identified the production of Millet as having great potential towards enhancing national and Regional food security. As the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) implements ‘Vision 25’ by 2025 to reduce the food import bill by approximately $US 1 billion by 2025, Millet is an ideal solution to increase food self-sufficiency and reduce reliance on imported cereal grains”.
