Minister Robert Persaud’s recent remarks about the nexus between agricultural production and securing markets, particularly overseas markets for the food we produce, has, for more reasons than one, struck a responsive chord with this newspaper.
The Minister’s remark goes to heart of an age-old pattern in the agricultural sector – with the notable exceptions of sugar and rice – that focuses on production, harvesting and transporting to markets and consumers located convenient distance away. It was a pattern that meant that farmers were not required to understand a great deal about the complexity of marketing which, in the case of agricultural products, actually starts even before a seed is planted. As it happens – and here again there are a few exceptions to the rule – farmers who cultivate most of the fruit and vegetables for which there is a regional, North American and European demand, are neither properly trained or, for the matter, attitudinally inclined to deal with the complexities of marketing.
Visions of Guyana taking advantage of export demand for its agricultural produce – as expressed in the time-worn phrase about the country being the bread basket of the Caribbean – are nothing new and with hindsight it is perhaps fair to say that we have made far too little progress in positioning ourselves to increase our share of the regional and international markets for food. Even now, thirty-odd years since we began to dream about increasing our food exports, we are still grappling with issues like packaging and labelling, which are surely fundamental to taking advantage of export markets.
If, as the Minister has said, the Ministry of Agriculture will be seeking to do more to secure international markets for locally produced fruit and vegetables, then that has to proceed in tandem with an understanding that the farmers are both physically equipped and emotionally prepared to satisfy all of the conditions associated with supplying international markets. Someone will have to tell them that overseas marketing starts with understanding what the customer wants and being able to deliver that product to the specifications, of size, quality and quantity and at competitive prices. That is the process, in a nutshell. The bigger picture includes financing, planting, tending, harvesting, storage, insurance, shipping, quality assurance and delivery, a complex process indeed.
Years ago enquiries made by a UK chain of supermarkets about purchasing fresh carambola from Guyana fell flat on its face principally for the reason that we could not guarantee storage and packaging arrangements that would ensure that the product reached the buyer in a manner considered acceptable. More than twenty years later those problems – that have to do with the packaging and preservation of perishables for export – are still with us.
Viewed in the context of the focus on increasing its international market share for both fresh and processed agricultural produce – the agro processing sector also has a considerable way to go in terms of meeting the demands of the export sector – the Minister of Agriculture appears to have gotten his mind around the magnitude of what is required to meet those demands. His recent pronouncement is really equivalent to saying that production is only part of the challenge. Accordingly, what he has done is to set his own Ministry the critical and decidedly demanding challenge of teaching the farmers – in many cases from scratch – the complexities of the process involved in international marketing. Some support has already been forthcoming from the New Guyana Marketing Corpora-tion in terms of bringing buyers and sellers together, providing cold storage transport for perishables in order to minimize spoilage and providing limited packhouse facilities.
There is, however, still some considerable way to go and somehow one suspects that much of the rest of the challenge reposes in persuading the farmers to make the huge psychological adjustment which they must if they are to take full advantage of international markets.
