DPI, GUYANA, Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana (UG), Professor Ivelaw Griffith has urged that Guyanese not lose sight of the important role agriculture continues to play, even as the oil and gas sector comes to the fore.

He made the comment recently while indicating the university’s plan to inaugurate a pilot Institute of Food and Nutrition and Security.

Farmers from across Berbice will now be provided with the opportunity to be trained and certified in crop protection. According to the Director of the University of Guyana Berbice Campus Gomathinayagam Subramanian, a special certification programme has been drafted to engage farmers in Berbice with mostly practical training on crop protection.

With the aim of producing safe, healthy and nutritious foods for consumption at home and abroad, Guyana will be moving to double its agricultural production over next few years, Minister of Agriculture Noel Holder has said.

The Minister was speaking at a consultation last Friday, organised by the University of Guyana (UG) at the Marriot Hotel which sought a collaboration with the government on the establishment of an Institute of Food and Nutrition Security.

With a determined goal to actualise local food security, the University of Guyana (UG) has collaborated with the Ministry of Agriculture to examine the possibility of establishing an Institute of Food Security.

The consultation, which opened this morning at the Marriot International Hotel, seeks to raise awareness and assess the status of food security in Guyana and the Caribbean region and assess the role an institute would have locally and regionally.

This month, Guyana is hosting three Agriculture sophomores from the University of Arkansas as part of the Education Abroad Program of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB).

Three students from the South American country of Guyana are currently pursuing master’s degrees in agricultural regulations from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. In addition to regular coursework, they are fulfilling graduate assistantships through work on a UAPB project intended to increase the availability of high-quality sweet potato planting materials to limited-resource farmers both in Guyana and in the Arkansas Delta.