By Staff Writer
Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha recently disclosed that financial provisions have been made in budget 2022 for specialists to be hired to advance initiatives on new crops. During the recently concluded consideration of the budget 2022 current and capital expenditure estimates, Mustapha said his team had previously engaged the Ministry of Public Service to ensure the required personnel is employed to fill several important positions.
“When I spoke at the Budget Debates, I said that the ministry is embarking on a number of new programmes. We are also looking at specialized personnel to fill certain vacancies…We have aquaculture as an emerging specialized industry so we’ll need specialized personnel. We have new crops that were never grown in Guyana like corn and soya bean and other non-traditional crops. We are also concentrating on high-value crops such as carrots and broccoli so we need specialized people,” Minister Mustapha said.
The official recalled that the PPP/C Government during its 2020 and 2021 budget presentations, had highlighted the need to have new programmes added to advance the production of new crops. One such programme which falls part of the government’s agenda to advance the agriculture sector while reducing the import bill for proteins used in the livestock sector was the corn and soya bean project.
In 2021, the government had partnered with a team of local investors who began cultivating corn and soya bean in the Tacama Savannah. In 2021, $500 million was allocated to commence infrastructural works in the area to facilitate the trial exercise that was undertaken by the group.
This included the cultivation of 111 acres of soya bean, and 5 acres of corn, which yielded approximately 2.3 tons per hectare.
The initial aim of the government is to facilitate the cultivation of 56,000 acres or 22,400 hectares to be able to satisfy the local demand, after which, cultivation for export to markets in the region will be targeted.
Additionally, the government has also embarked on introducing large-scale production of high-value crops like broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. In this regard, President Dr. Mohammed Irfaan Ali recently launched the Agriculture and Innovation Entrepreneurship Programme which seeks to give budding agriculturalists an opportunity to contribute to the growth and development of Guyana’s agriculture sector while earning substantial remunerations given the high market value of these crops.
This year, twenty-five (25) shade houses will be constructed as part of the first phase of the initiative. As the programme advances, up to 300 shade houses will be constructed across the country.
Construction of five model shade houses is currently ongoing at the National Agriculture Research and Extension Institute’s (NAREI) Mon Repos farm. These model shade houses will be used to guide the beneficiaries on best practices and good crop husbandry to ensure they get the best results out of the project. Guyana Standard understands that the government has allocated $100 million in budget 2022 to ensure the project’s success.
