Pomeroon farmers not wilting under COVID-19 ‘heat’
On the banks of the Pomeroon River, farmers have, for decades, been cultivating a bewildering range of cash crops… citrus, avocado, ground provision, plantain, banana and coconut, among others, their pursuits inherited from the generation, or two, which preceded them. They may not lead lives of luxury but most of them have found farming to be a tough but fairly rewarding way of life. Equally significant is the fact that their pursuits have, over the years, contributed in no small way to Guyana’s well-earned reputation as the ‘bread basket of the Caribbean’.
The challenges associated with farming are not infrequent. These, over the years, however, have been responded to through practices that are grounded either in the institutional curriculum comprising agricultural science and/or in the instinctive remedial pursuits of the farmers themselves.
Up until now however, few if any of them would have been aware of a malady called coronavirus, a fearful malady the effects of which can be either terminal as well as overwhelmingly disruptive to normal life.
Wendell Daniels, a farmer at Grant Unity, on the Pomeroon River, has grown used to the predictability of cultivating citrus, coconut, pumpkin, watermelon, cherry, plantain, banana and a range of other cash crops and moving them to the more lucrative coastal markets. There is an ironclad logic to farming which real farmers like Wendell understand. You will get out of it only as much as you put into it. COVID-19 has contemptuously dismissed that logic.
Like his fellow farmers in the Pomeroon River, Wendell is searching earnestly for the returns from his efforts. These days, those are hard to find.
To the farmers, coronavirus is an insidious beast. It does not-at least as far as we know – unleash its venom directly on food cultivation. It simply works its way through the infrastructure, the chain between farm and market, creating a proverbial ‘traffic jam’ that collapses everything.
In an interview with the Stabroek Business earlier this week, Daniels relates how COVID-19 has, in the instances of some crops, brought production to a shuddering halt and in the cases of others, pushed production down by more than twenty per cent. Farms in the Pomeroon river area are teeming with ‘mountains’ of produce that will simply rot and return from whence it came.
Daniels says that in order to ‘cut their losses,’ some of the farmers have immersed themselves in proverbial giveaways in an attempt to reduce spoilage. Prices are ‘on the floor’.
Coconut is the mainstay of Daniels’ farming pursuits. They are, he says, ‘good sellers.’ Each week he sells between four and five thousand ‘nuts’. As a general rule, these days, he gets $60 each. When the picker gets paid for picking and loading, Daniels’ returns are by no means excessively generous. That is the scenario in normal times. These days the price of coconuts has been slashed to $35 each… so they remain on the trees, eventually drop and become ‘dry coconut’ in the fullness of time. There is no money in coconuts after that. They are carted off to some remote part of the farm, out of harm’s way. Time was when at least six coconut buyers would travel from Georgetown to Charity, daily. The traffic has dropped to one or two trucks daily.
The extent of trading at the Monday Charity Market is as good a barometer as any of the ‘mood’ of the agriculture sector in the region. Last Monday was terrible! Daniels sold four pumpkins. He would usually sell a great many more. It was the same with watermelon. When you return home with the majority of the produce that you had brought to market you get that sickening feeling of loss. The ‘lockdown’ at Moruca had been largely responsible for the ‘slowness’ at Charity. The people from Moruca are the big buyers of cash crops and fruit and their casareep, farine, and cassava bread, bring other buyers to the market.
Back in February Wendell Daniels invested three million dollars in a 25-acre plot of land for the cultivation of watermelon and plantain. The crops were planted then coronavirus intervened. Harvesting has begun. “I sell a few; I give away a lot; some spoil and I still have more. I am hoping that I will still get a few more sales from people in the ‘back dam’ [the goldfields].” The money investment in the 25-acre plot had come from the sale of a Canter. He pauses before responding to a question on how he feels about those losses. “As a farmer for over twenty years, that is something you have to factor in. I recall one year I lost everything on my farm…no money for that year… I am still here.”
Between April and June the sale of cherries brings in some useful returns. Daniels says he was unable to sell cherries during this season – April to June. This year, demand amongst the four or five persons who usually buy his cherries ‘in bulk’ dipped sharply. The cherries remain on the trees and will eventually all fall to the ground and rot.
Other farmers from the region had told us that large crops of oranges this season meant “good money and Daniels concurs. Prior to the ‘arrival’ of COVID-19, oranges were being sold at 100 for $1000. As popular opinion came, increasingly, to link citrus with fending off coronavirus, the prices for oranges went through the proverbial roof, increasing as much as eight fold. Lemons, meanwhile, began to command a price of $100 each. Limes, having been contemptuously ignored by the farmers and simply left to drop and rot during the pre-COVID period were now ‘bringing in’ the same price of up to COVID period, for one lemon. Before the pandemic, limes were left to drop and rot. These days, limes are being sold at $40 each. Daniels is eagerly anticipating the September-October citrus season.
The diminished fortunes of the agricultural sector in the Pomeroon have resulted in considerable job losses. Daniels has had to release three of his seven employees.
The trials of COVID-19 are added to by plant diseases and the clogging at the mouth of the Essequibo River which results in the flooding of farms and in some instances, abandonment. Their owners, in many instances seek the option of the ‘goldfields’.
Draining the farms means incurring the additional costs of pumps and fuel. Daniels owns three pumps powered by a 120-horse-power engine. To keep his farm drained he has to consume a drum of fuel nightly. That costs $35,000. It is in investment that he has no choice but to make. Daniels believes that the solution to some of the challenges confronting Pomeroon farmers can be solved by transforming the community into the hub of agro-processing in Guyana. Certainly, it reduces the travails associated with moving produce over long distances to markets in the capital and elsewhere, utilizing facilities that can sometimes be unreliable.
At 65, Wendell Daniels, has been ‘around the block’ as far as business is concerned. Over time he has worked as a farmer, a miner, and a trader. He is back with farming and it is here, he believes, that he will remain until he calls it a day… COVID-19 or otherwise.