Amidst the heralding of developments in an industry awakened by an invigorating and informative Festival last year October, the real groundwork required for a solid foundation for the coconut industry is proceeding with less fanfare.
One characteristic of rebuilding an industry of this potential magnitude in today’s competitive world is the need for a solid production base sustained by sound principles of business. Investment decisions must be based on solid data, and this principle applies to any enterprise on any scale. It is in recognition of this fact that field work on characterizing the production base of coconut sectors across the Caribbean is proceeding apace, with Guyana, along with Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, being very much in the forefront of that initiative.
The initiative, spearheaded by the International Trade Centre (ITC), has extracted samples from a database being compiled by the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI), a vital support agency for the local National Stakeholders Platform (NSP). The Institute’s data base boasts around 1600 active coconut farmers with the size of holdings varying from less than 2 acres to about 3000 acres in a national acreage cumulatively estimated at about 25,000 acres. A tallying valid for up to the middle of 2017 shows 81% of farmers falling within categories of less than 2 to 6 acres, thus representing the Project’s prime target beneficiaries.
