Proposals on ethanol and non-traditional crops are among the initiatives the government will be using to draw investors to the local agriculture sector and Minister Robert Persaud says government has no plans to intervene in the market.

Persaud said he hoped the Regional Agriculture Investment Forum being held today and tomorrow will correct under-investment in the sector.

“For some time now [there has been] under-investment in the agriculture sector,” Persaud told Stabroek News in a recent interview, adding that the plan is to correct this through the forum.

In the past, several investors have signalled their intention to invest in ethanol production in Guyana, and the government has begun identifying possible land for this, but maintained that agricultural land for food consumption would not be sacrificed.  

The minister also said that the days of the New Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) intervening in the market by buying produce are over, since it is the ministry’s view that the New GMC’s role will be to take buyers directly to the farmer and to work with the farmer to make him/her an entrepreneur. That is, to empower the farmer and not to make him dependent on middlemen, he said. In addition, he said, the government has no intention of getting involved in the growing of food for sale……