Agriculture in Guyana

Much of this fertile area lay more than one meter below the high-tide level of the sea and had to be protected by a system of dikes and dams which were built by the Dutch using slave labour.

Today in Guyana sugar production generates the most revenue in the primary industry, at around 15% of the total annual GNP.

Sugar plantation labour was a destination point for the Atlantic slave trade, and when slavery was abolished under English rule as British Guiana, indentured servants were brought in, mainly from India.

Sugar trade favoured European countries with tropical colonies where the cost of labour was exceptionally low.

Perhaps more important, Guysuco did not have access to the reserves of foreign capital required to maintain sugar plantations and processing mills during economically difficult periods.

Rising production costs after nationalization, along with falling world sugar prices since the late 1970s, placed Guyana in an increasingly uncompetitive position.

Prices were expected to continue decreasing as China, Thailand, and India boosted sugar supplies to record high levels.

[citation needed] In the face of such keen international competition, Guyana grew increasingly dependent on its access to the subsidized markets of Europe and the United States.

The bulk of sugar exports (about 160,000 tons per year in the late 1980s) went to the European Economic Community (EEC) under the Lomé Convention, a special quota arrangement.

[12] Exports in 2019 were 92,246 tonnes, the lowest in nearly a century, GuySuCo pinning the blame on mechanical failures at the factory level.

[17] Introduced by the Dutch to feed slaves working in the sugar industry, production increased when indentured Indians were brought to the country.

Rice production is weakened by poor irrigation infrastructure and susceptible to weather conditions and encroaching salt water from the Atlantic.

In the remote Rupununi region of Guyana, peanut farming dominates the local economy and farmers depend upon the crop as their main source of income.

[20] Timber is mainly exported as logs, and forest land concessions are held by large domestic and international firms.

[21] The two main difficulties in timber production were the limited access to the forests and electrical power problems at the major lumber mills.

The government launched the Upper Demerara Forestry Project in the early 1980s to improve hardwood production on a 220,000-hectare site.

In 1985 the International Development Association, part of the World Bank, provided a US$9 million loan for expansion of the forestry industry.

[20] In 1990 the government sold the state-owned logging company and announced plans to allow significant South Korean and Malaysian investment in the timber industry.

A US$5 million fish-processing plant was under construction on the Demerara River in 1990, raising the possibility of frozen fish exports.

[24] There are numerous important institutions and organizations which are involved in agriculture in Guyana:[25] This article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress