…the plight of residents of DeVeldt
Farmers in DeVeldt, Berbice River are severely affected by a lack of market for their crops and millions of dollars in vegetables and ground provision planted for sale continue to rot due to this challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic has not made this challenge any better and farmers are looking for a swift way out; their livelihoods depend on it.
When the farmers plant their crops, harvest them and transport them all the way to New Amsterdam, the market is already so saturated with the same crops that vendors are bargaining to pay next-to-nothing for whole sale trade. “A boat go out last week with some pumpkins, less than 2,000 pounds, and come back with actually half,” Community Development Council (CDC) Chairman, Laxley Lindie said.
Meanwhile, 54-year-old farmer, Ulric Lindie, is among many who have pulled the short end of the stick on pumpkin farming. A visit to one of his farms located not far aback his house ended in what one could term as a ‘pumpkin graveyard’. Acres of pumpkins, large and small, lay rotten on the ground. “I’ve lost thousands [of pumpkins] here plus I have another farm down the river where I never took out one pound [of pumpkin] and all you’re seeing is them big pumpkins just rotting. Not even one has come out of there,” he said. Other crops were being grown on the farm visited but the pumpkins alone took up about two acres of land. It takes about three months for pumpkins to grow to maturity.
Another resident further up the river reported that he had acres of cassava but no buyers. “If you carry out a couple hundred pounds of plantain, banana, anything, you’re hardly getting sales. This is how it has been for a very long time,” the resident said.
He reminisced to years ago when the large steamboat, the MV Kimbia, built in 1980, would ply the Berbice River route with persons who had joined the boat just to purchase from farmers along the way. However, he updated: “The steamer stopped running and now you find people coming from North West (Region 1) and all over the place to New Amsterdam with trucks and selling there. So, even though you carry out your things now you can’t get sales.”
At the farm, Lindie gave a tour of his where he plants eddoes, plantains and watermelons which access easier markets but still have their challenges “I went to New Amsterdam last year and when I went out there people wanted to pay $45 for a pound of eddo,” he recounted.
The wife of a boat builder chimed in, noting that taking the produce to Georgetown is not feasible because it costs more money and it would still be a gamble for sale. Pressed with this harsh reality, the CDC Chair was plain spoken when he said that many residents have turned to the illegal growing of marijuana. “There’s no sense in hiding it. Most people, they turn to drugs and that’s not the best thing we want for the community,” he said. “We need to get off from this.”
Some of the headlines coming out of the district just this year include: ‘Over $100M in ganja destroyed along Berbice River’; ‘Police destroy over 11,000 ganja plants in Berbice River’ and ‘Berbice cops destroy $300M in ganja for year so far’.
The boat builder’s wife said: “The challenges are forcing them into it because you plant your thing and you’re not getting it sell. You’re going to go to what sells.”
As a riverine community, the most common form of livelihood in DeVeldt is farming. Other residents are also into logging and construction, apart from the limited jobs available at the government schools or the health center.
Speaking to the farming aspect, the CDC Chair remedied: “They don’t have markets and we need to get export markets for pumpkins and these things so that people can farm their crops.”
Lindie said that, under the former Administration, representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture had visited to get an understanding of the challenges, even to discuss the possibility of canning the pumpkins, but no lasting steps were taken. He agrees than an organised structure is needed to guide farmers on how much of a crop they should produce based on the availability of markets. Apart from farming, to maintain a livelihood for his family he sometimes joins in with other men in pasturing. While the Government has signaled its intention to assist Guyanese affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with stimulus packages, farmers in DeVeldt, also speaking on behalf others along the Berbice River, are imploring not to be left out. “We are all Guyanese and everybody would be glad for the assistance,” Lindie said.
