Essequibo farmer shrugs off rice blues with aggressive excursion into vegetables
Hanoman Ramsaroop is a farmer ‘to the bone.’ On Fridays he makes his way to the Anna Regina Market to sell the vegetables cultivated on his farm situated off the Capoey access road. He spends the entire trading day at the market…roughly from 5:00hrs to 14:00hrs daily. It is the only respite that he gets from farming, which has been his preoccupation for the past 33 years.
Hanoman is not bashful about ‘talking up’ his produce. He believes that where quality is concerned his customers never get anything less than a good deal. He insists that his boulanger, tomato, bora, pepper and cabbage, among other crops cultivated on his two-acre farm benefit from expert attention. His cultivation pattern ensures that on any given day he can offer fresh supplies of a range of vegetables sufficient to meet the needs of both his wholesale and retail customers. Quality, he says, is the competitive edge that has enabled an impressive rate of customer retention among customers who come from as far away as Moruca and the Pomeroon.
Ramsaroop mentions, almost incidentally, that he is also a rice farmer. The demise of the Petro Caribe Agreement that afforded rice cultivated in the Essequibo Coast access to a lucrative Venezuelan market has meant that the crop is nowhere near as talked-about in the community as it used to be.
Cash crop farming he concedes, is different, more intense, more demanding.
Ramsaroop now finds himself more attached to his cash crop farm. This is primarily because the cash crop farm needs more attention and is done yearround. He earns a steady income in spite of additional competition whenever rice is in crop. Having observed the market trend, he concluded that the rice industry is one of the main factors that determines the price and supply of vegetables being sold at the Anna Regina Market.
You have to be part of an agricultural community to properly understand the correlation between the rice and vegetables industry. When rice is ‘in crop’ the rice farmers must find one means or another of subsidizing their incomes. Fresh vegetables are as good an option as any.
“Whenever rice in crop you find more persons growing vegetables to sustain their livelihoods until the rice crop is harvested…when the rice crop is harvested and persons have more disposable income the volume of vegetables on the market reduces. Vegetable cultivation when rice is out of crop also suffers since cattle farmers seize the opportunity