FAO helping Guyana to design modern marketing intelligence system

Guyanese farmers’ complaints about limited markets for their produce will soon have some relief as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is helping this country develop its own comprehensive marketing intelligence system that would connect with others in the Caribbean.

In addition to use of more modern technology, the system is likely to feature food production information and, more importantly, reach out to rural farmers. The local FAO office in Guyana will be overseeing the project and has already identified an international consultant to design and establish the system.

Poor marketing is one of the common complaints local farmers utter despite various efforts and adjustments at the regional level. Caribbean agriculture ministers had identified in the Jagdeo Initiative that inadequate marketing arrangements are one the key binding constraints to agriculture repositioning.

Trinidad and Tobago has managed to develop the National Agricultural Marketing Development Corporation (NAMDEVCO), now seen as a “best practice” for marketing information and intelligence in the region. That country has since asked other member states to develop their own systems that would interconnect with NAMDEVCO as well as each other.

In Guyana, the government requested help from FAO to get the system up and operable. Already, the New Guyana Marketing Corporation (GMC) has a National Agricultural Marketing Information System (NAMIS) whereby farmers are able to access basic market updates using their cellular phones.

However, FAO representative in Guyana Dr Lystra Fletcher-Paul explained that Guyana is looking at “a much bigger system” that would focus on production as well as marketing, incorporating modern software and reaching out to producers in the rural areas.

“We are looking at how many acres of crops are on the ground? Where are they? What are the expected yields? Which areas are expected to be harvesting? What are the times for harvesting? So it is a much bigger system,” Dr Fletcher-Paul explained.

She added that one of the most important components is to link with hinterland farmers building on existing resources. Under the ongoing Rural Enterprise Agricultural Development Project (READ), the Guyana government has established a number of business centres at various locations that are now equipped with computers.

Hence, the FAO representative related that her organisation is working to link Guyana’s marketing information system with the Internet “where farmers could go into one of these areas in the rural communities, go onto the computer, get on to the link to the New GMC and identify where the markets are and what are the prices.”

The system could also provide information on export requirements under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) educating Guyanese farmers on trade restrictions and helping them to understand some of the pest risk management they need to know as food producers.

According to Dr Fletcher-Paul, the FAO has developed a piece of software, Agri Market, used all over the world as another best practice for formatting this type of information.

The New GMC, she said, already has an updated version of the software. Therefore, the consultant would merely help to set up the framework for the required hardware and software, and ensure that systems are in place for the corporation to continue updating the system.

This would require recruitment of a database manager who would be responsible for coordinating data entry into the system, while another individual would be tasked with checking the integrity of the information to ensure there are no errors.

The FAO representative, however, highlighted that the local Agriculture Ministry has invested a lot of resources already into staff and computer facilities that would make it easy for the FAO to design the comprehensive system and put it into operation.

Unlike other countries that usually ask the FAO to invest in the required server, Dr Fletcher-Paul observed, “Guyana is serious. They have actually bought the hardware already, and now all they want us to do is help them with the software.”