For all the official discourse and the various initiatives undertaken to talk up the value-added potential of Guyana’s agricultural sector there is no question that the country continues to be way below its potential in this regard. If there are a few noteworthy examples of agro-processed products that have made an impact both at home and on the external market, it can hardly be reasonably denied that we remain stuck at a level where efforts to strengthen this particular facet of our productive sector remain pegged at a level that leaves us little to be proud of.
This is despite the fact that agro-processing has long been in the spotlight as a sub-sector of the wider agricultural sector and as a key element in the wider local/regional discourse on increasing local food production for food security’s sake, as well as in an effort to secure a greater share of the global market.
Over time, we have sought to push agro-processing at the level of GuyExpo and there have been initiatives undertaken at the levels of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI), among others to raise awareness of the importance of agro-processing. There was even a period when there was a visible local Agro-Processors Association though there is really no telling whether, in real terms, this Association still exists and what it does.
This, of course, is not to say that most of the small investor efforts in agro-processing have not been, to some degree, worthwhile though we can no longer delude ourselves into thinking that a diligent effort on the part of enterprising individual women and women’s groups to produce a few dozen bottles on one condiment or another can be equated with a collective national effort to realize a genuine takeoff in the agro-processing industry.
Jamaica, for example, would appear to be well ahead of the game as far as agro-processing is concerned and in that regard the recently announced joint initiative involving that country’s world-class food producer, Grace Kennedy and the state-run Science Research Council (SRC) to collaborate in the creating of a stronger agro-processing sector is a lesson from which we can learn. It should be noted that the collaborative effort in Jamaica will benefit heavily from the work that has already been done to determine the extent of the demand for agro-based products including what we loosely describe as ‘convenience foods’ and health-related products.
Guyana, despite the country’s distinct advantage in terms of agricultural capacity remains leagues behind Jamaica in this regard. Part of the reason has to do with the fact that government has not done nearly enough to apply science to the development of the agro-processing sector. The other reason is that having failed to become anywhere near as successful as Jamaica in producing agro-processed products that can compete effectively on the international market we have failed to create an entity that has undertaken the kind of research that provides us with information regarding the direction in which we need to be going.
There are several advantages to be derived from the strengthening of Guyana’s agro-processing sector, one of the most apparent of which is that an expanded food processing sector will strengthen demand for fruit and vegetables grown in Guyana and will, by extension, strengthen the economic position of our farmers. There are also the employment prospects that derive from such pursuits and the incentives that are likely to be created from private sector investment in new industries. The pursuit of agro-processing will also strengthen the research capacity of those entities that are responsible for the various facets of food production to say nothing about the science-based spinoffs in areas like safety and health standards in the food-manufacturing sector.
All of these considerations have been discussed exhaustively, over the years, though it has to be said that, on each occasion, those discourses have stopped short of any concrete action that has brought meaningful change. The handful of Guyana-manufactured food products that have realized some success on the international market have materialized out of modest private sector efforts and most of them by trial and error. It is high time that government well and truly steps up to the plate.
