Region Ten pushes for greater food security
The pursuit by farmers in Region Ten of greater self-sufficiency in agricultural produce in the wake of the floods in 2005 and 2006 has begun to pay important dividends as the country braces itself to face steadily rising food prices.
Linden Economic Advancement Pro-gramme (LEAP) agriculture and economics expert Oswald Kwamina has told Stabroek Business that the region has already realized around 70 per cent self-sufficiency in some fresh fruit, vegetables and poultry and that increased agricultural production has already begun to pay dividends in terms of prices that now compare favourably with prices in Georgetown.
Region Ten’s focus on growing more of the food that it consumes assumes a particular significance in the context of government’s call for a countrywide increase in food production and Kwamina told Stabroek Business that the region was now a major producer of pak choi, tomatoes, bora, cucumber, water melons and lettuce and that the region had also recorded a significant increase in poultry production.
Two years ago the Linden Economic Advancement Programme (LEAP) contracted the Trinidadian firm Vocaty and Associates to undertake a feasibility study aimed at determining the capacity of Region Ten to realize self-sufficiency in food production following steep rises in the prices of fresh fruit and vegetables in the wake of two successive years of serious flooding in the country’s major agricultural areas. Kwamina told Stabroek Business that the study had resulted from a recommendation made by Regional Chairman Mortimer Mingo and that its outcome had been used as a springboard to pursue initiatives aimed at encouraging more food production in the region.
LEAP has made a significant contribution to the region’s agricultural drive by funding major land-clearing exercises in various areas of the region including West Watooka, Speightland and Dallawalla. Farmers in the region have also benefited from LEAP-funded technical support.
Kwamina said that the 20-acre demonstration farm at Moblissa was also producing commercial quantities of pumpkins, bora and other vegetables and that several small and medium-sized poultry production enterprises had mushroomed in Linden and its environs.
“What we have found is that traders from outside of Linden who have traditionally sold fruit and vegetables here are now shifting to more ground provision since the demand for their fruit and vegetables has reduced significantly. Our effort to achieve self-sufficiency in fresh fruit and vegetables is definitely making an impact,” Kwamina added.
Kwamina told Stabroek Business the region was also producing an estimated 70 per cent of the approximately 3 million pounds of chicken which it consumes annually and that the current retail price for chicken compares favourably with prices in Georgetown.
Meanwhile, according to Kwamina the region will shortly be launching a “Grow and Garden” initiative designed to encourage even greater enthusiasm for farming among Lindeners. He said that efforts to accelerate farming in Linden had begun some time before the current global alarm over dwindling food stocks and rising food prices and that the region was concerned, in the first instance, about its own food security.
And Vice President of the Region Ten Farmers Association Yogeshwar Rhambharrat said that farmers in Dallawalla and other areas of the region are yet to secure leases promised by government to facilitate expansion of existing farms. According to Rhambharrat, government had allocated an initial ten acres of farmlands to farmers in the Dallawalla area and had promised to provide leases for further acreage once there was evidence that the lands originally allocated had been cultivated. He said that although some farmers had already brought those lands under cultivation and despite communication with government over several months the subsequent leases were yet to be allocated.
And Kwamina told Stabroek Bus-iness that the farmers were pressing for the additional leases since these could be used in engaging commercial banks for investment loans. He said that currently small farmers in the region were accessing modest loans from the Linden Economic Advancement Fund (LEAF) which were not adequate for major agricultural expansion.
