Santa Fe project holds out great promise to schools

Dear Editor,
The idea of a self-sufficient school is not farfetched. In the late 1970s, my secondary school used to have a great agricultural input. It was so designed that, for every term, the students used to plant small scale, and they always ended up taking home things like bora, boulanger and pepper, among other things. The signs were there for the idea of earning while learning.
This principle is now really gathering some momentum, and I think that Guyana must jump on it, but in a more purposeful and wide-spread manner.
Kudos are in order for all the relevant groups for making good the ‘earn while-you- learn’ philosophy quite a reality.
A visiting team of officials from the Agriculture Ministry was most impressed by the progress at the Santa Fe mega farm, where harvesting of paddy has already begun. In fact the first bumper crop of dry land rice will be processed at the nearby mill that was specifically set up for this purpose.
Brazil has been in this kind of rice cultivation for over 25 years, and it is good that Guyana’s experimentation so far is looking quite good. It should be noted that the Santa Fe project is really modelled after what is happening in Brazil, and it is a Brazilian expert, who is guiding the process.
Where Santa Fe is concerned, it is good to note that the farm is also exploring cultivation of some fruits and vegetables, as the aim is to create a large-scale multi- farm. At present, all crops, including rice, are being done on a very small scale, but the expectation is to increase production over time, even as plans are in place to introduce new cultivation to the farm.
In fact, where rice alone is concerned, the next rice crop is expected to see about 1000 acres of rice being cultivated.
Also on the agenda is the rearing of beef and dairy animals on 30 acres of the farmland.
This is how Guyana must think. There is abundance of space, and the land is quite amenable to farming. All that is needed is willingness to invest. In time to come, I am sure that self-sufficiency will be achieved and earning from selling and export will be realised.
A good education is considered one of the best routes out of poverty.
However, in many developing countries, technical and vocational education is neither good nor readily available to many youths.
Also, distance may pose many challenges. So, especially in the riverine areas, where communities are blessed with land mass, the bi-vocational and self-sufficiency idea can work wonders.
Let me leave a little inspiration for Santa Fe and others who may want to go this route. In Paraguay, the self-sufficient school idea took root in one school in 2003. The emphasis was on technical and vocational education, and farming was the route.
The school has now been able to transform young farmers into financially successful “rural entrepreneurs” by integrating the teaching of traditional high school subjects with the running of 17 small-scale, on-campus rural enterprises.
I think these types of success stories can become more and more abundant in Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
Damien Glasgow