Valuing agriculture
A few days ago the Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) issued a media release that made a few instructive points about aspects of the country’s agricultural sector including its potential to increase its market share for fruits and vegetables on the regional and international markets and the constraints that inhibit the realization of that objective.
The first thing that should be said here is that despite several decades of repeated chatter about Guyana’s potential to be the bread basket of the Caribbean we have not come anywhere close to realizing that dream. This is due to several factors including the inability of our agricultural sector to expand sufficiently over the years to meet both local and external demand, a lack of structured and aggressive regional and extraregional marketing of our agricultural products, challenges associated with transport, particularly air transport, to move cargo from Guyana to the various other destinations inside and outside the region and for a number of decades serious limitations in our ability to process and package foods to a level that meets the increasingly demanding standards of external markets. One might add that some of our agro-based manufactured products – like honey and coconut water – have been victims of what has appeared to be protectionist ruses in the region that compromise the free trade regime to which CARICOM says it subscribes.
Some of these issues were raised in the aforementioned GMC media release though there is a limit to which the entity can effectively address them. For example, the GMC concedes that securing reliable air transport arrangements to move agricultural produce to markets in the region is a challenge that remains unmet and that it continues to seek out opportunities through which a more reliable service can be realized.
The GMC, does, however, seek to reach out to farmers through its offer of what it says is packaging space that still exists at its Parika and Sophia packaging facilities and crucially its semi processing facilities that are due to come on stream next year and which are crucial in the context of the quality standards demanded by importers.
Arising out of this one sees a further opportunity for investment in agriculture by local business enterprises with an eye on the external market. given the fact that the GMC’s release actually lists specific fruits and vegetables (pumpkins and coconuts are on that list) that are in demand on the regional market.
Another challenge is the weather, particularly in Berbice and the Pomeroon, the GMC says and this, it seems, has been severe enough to place restrictions on the volumes of foods that are actually available for export.
In a sense what the GMC appears to have done is to set the agricultural sector, the business community and the government separate but equally important challenges that have to do with expanding the overseas market for our fruits and vegetables. To begin with, government, it has to be said has to bear much of the responsibility for ‘looking around’ to find the additional airlift which the GMC says is needed for the movement of cargo to the region. This is a task that has to be undertaken with an accelerated sense of urgency so that it can give meaningful support to efforts to increasing export earnings from agriculture. What the GMC’s observations about still existing markets does is to give local businessmen something to think about insofar as investing in agriculture that targets the external market is concerned. Here, there may also be an opportunity for new, smaller investments in agriculture locally, that target niche markets in the Caribbean and elsewhere.
As far as the weather and its impact on agricultural production in some regions is concerned there may, perhaps, be need for a strategic shift that focuses on a greater concentration of farming on lands in parts of the country where inclement weather is less of a challenge.
One assumes, of course, that the content of the GMC’s media release has been taken account of by its parent body, that is, the Ministry of Agriculture and that the content thereof may be grafted onto the broader national agenda for agriculture in the period ahead. What the release does in its own (perhaps unintended) way is to make a none too quiet case for the worthwhileness of our persistence of agriculture as part of the backbone of the country’s economy, the imminent emergence of an oil and gas economy notwithstanding.
What is also more than a little encouraging is that its packing facility apart, the GMC also offers farmers services equipped to add value to their exports which of course provides greater assurance of external market acceptance. Here too is an indication that the agricultural sector and its agro-processing sub-sector are gradually moving towards slaying the demon of product presentation that has, for so long, plagued the country’s export sector. There can be little doubt that if Guyana can get even further ahead in terms of the marketability of our food exports our status in the region will be significantly enhanced.
One gets the feeling that the good fortune of a thriving agricultural sector which Guyana has traditionally enjoyed may have rendered us somewhat indifferent to its inherent value and to its potential to contribute even more not only to the country’s economy but to its strategic significance in the region. What the GMC has had to say recently is a timely reminder of the value of our blessing.