For Guyana to be successful in its agricultural development a detailed study of problems at each step of the production and marketing chain must be done by a carefully put together working group comprising farmers, exporters, sector entrepreneurs, government and donors.
This is the view of Jerry La Gra, former country director of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and now executive officer of S-SOS, an NGO dedicated to technology transfer. He believes that very little is being done to methodically study each issue with a view to finding solutions to the main constraints. He said success will require a continuous plan executed over five to ten years.
La Gra said that there is a tendency in the country to decide to grow a certain crop and target it for export without the requisite research of all the issues involved. He said that as a result the project may fail within two to three years.
“We have land, water and sunshine, giving Guyana a comparative advantage, but [success] could only be achieved through planning and solutions to the problems that exist. You are never going to solve all the problems but you can look at those for certain key produce – you need to prioritise,” he said, adding that there needs to be a shortlist of five or so products chosen based on production and market advantages. “Then you must do a detailed analysis of each part of the system to determine causes of those problems. Only at that point you can identify the solutions. These will be medium to long term solutions,” La Gra said.
According to La Gra, Guyana should draw up land classification maps showing what can be grown where so that potential investors will know which areas are likely to suffer from flooding and other adverse conditions. He said that Guyana tends to have a top-down approach instead of a bottom up one, where the farmers determine the scale and volume of their production to suit the markets.
