Agricultural future

As we celebrate fifty-one years of independence, it’s a good time to put aside our differences –political, religious, etc ‒ and ask ourselves what are the long term plans we have, and which we should be putting in place for our children and grandchildren and future generations.

As the sugar industry slowly succumbs after generations of faithfully providing for the nation’s coffers, and the population awaits with bated anticipation for a change in the country’s fortunes with the arrival of the oil industry, how prepared are we for the future? What are the plans for the next fifty years in agriculture, energy, technology, education, the sovereign wealth fund? Should we have a national think tank to constantly examine, review and plan for these and other issues?

With the advent of global warming, agriculture and not oil ‒ after all, we don’t know how much is there and what it will cost to retrieve it, and what return we will receive on it ‒ could very well be the key industry for future generations of Guyanese. In the Sunday edition of this newspaper, they were three glimpses of this potential future.

There was a Reuters report that Norway was “repairing the entrance of a ‘doomsday’ seed vault on an Arctic island after an unexpected thaw of permafrost let water into a building meant as a deep freeze to safeguard the world’s food supplies.” The permafrost had been expected to refreeze but the temperatures have risen in the Arctic region at twice the global average, a result scientists blame on man-made greenhouse gases. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault established in 2008, stores millions of seeds of crops including rice, maize, potatoes and wheat, and is run by the Bonn-based Crop Trust that is trying to safeguard seeds in collections around the world.

The loss of seed banks in civil strife and natural disasters has occurred before. The seed banks of Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines have been lost; the latter was initially damaged in a flood, and then wiped out by a fire. Have we considered the establishment of three or four seed banks scattered around the country?

The National Agriculture and Research and Extension Institute (NAREI) at Mon Repos is spearheading the adaption of modern technology as Guyana seeks to diversify into the production of non-traditional crops. Last weekend’s report on the beginnings of successful returns from farmers growing potatoes and onions augurs well for the future in this area. Besides, the saving of precious foreign exchange, NAREI’s CEO Dr Oudho Homenauth anticipates that eventually these two vegetables can be grown on a large enough scale to become foreign earners. NAREI’s other research into increasing returns from traditional produce like coconuts and plantains is also noteworthy.

Are we placing enough emphasis in the teaching of agriculture to the upcoming generations?

Is this an area that has been reviewed thoroughly by the Commission of Inquiry into the workings of the Ministry of Education? Is the Guyana School of Agriculture actively selling the value of its education? Are we as parents encouraging our children who have not been raised within a farming environment to consider the agriculture industry as a career?

The third news item was the presentation of a lease for 5,000 acres of land in the South Rupununi Savannahs to Brazilian farmer and investor Nelson Itikawa, who intends to cultivate rice using advanced technology and soil corrective techniques. As we welcome our neighbour and latest investor, perhaps we can learn from his expertise of adapting advanced technology to the rice industry, and apply it to other areas in the industry.

With its vast expansive open land spaces, the South Rupununi provides the ideal conditions that can be harnessed for cattle rearing, soya bean cultivation and orchards of citrus, as feasibility studies have shown. Whilst people are growing crops in boxes on the rooftops of skyscrapers in Hong Kong, our lands here languish.

The Caribbean’s annual food import bill is $4 billion. Can we become the bread basket of the Caribbean and eventually one of the world’s leading net exporters of food? Guyana and our children’s future is ours to determine.