Youth and biodiversity: is Guyanese agriculture undergoing a revival?

A vast French territory located in the Amazon rainforest, French Guiana is of strategic interest to France and Europe, commensurate with the spatial activity that has taken place there. It is also a prime natural forest area facing strong population growth, which calls into question past and future agricultural models. Immersed in a very specific territory whose development offers many lessons for other regions of the world facing the same challenges: production and ecosystem protection.

Overview of Guyanese agriculture

Among the French regions, both metropolitan and overseas, French Guiana stands out as a special case. This vast territory, one-fifth the size of mainland France, is sparsely populated but is experiencing some of the highest population growth, second only to Mayotte. In 1970, the department of French Guiana had barely 30,000 inhabitants. There are around 300,000 of them today, and according to INSEE, this population, which has almost doubled in 25 years, increases by 2.3 % each year. In addition, half of the population is under 25 years old, which poses real constraints on employment but presents itself as an opportunity in agriculture. Indeed, the presence of motivated young people to settle down is a major asset.

Such a demographic context, which is also observed in other intertropical regions of the world, is a challenge for agriculture which must strive to satisfy a sharply increasing demand for food. However, Guyanese production is experiencing only limited growth and the rate of coverage of food needs by imports is continuously increasing. Land and its control represent significant potential for the agricultural development of the territory. The agricultural area used in the French Guiana is approximately 35,000 ha, of which 15,500 ha are meadows (areas still under grass). The remainder is divided between orchards (6,000 ha) and areas classified as “arable” (13,400 ha). There are also approximately 40,000 ha of undeveloped agricultural land (sources: Annual Agricultural Statistics 2020).

The 2010 Structures survey counted nearly 6,000 farms. There are reportedly nearly of 6,400 today. Agriculture occupies less than 1% of the territory, but she would employ around 20,000 workers be close to 7% of the population.

The Green Plan: public policies first inspired by the European agricultural model

Since the 1970s, agricultural development in Guyana has been a public policy issue whose number 1 tool is the land, owned by the State (and today also by local authorities), accessible to anyone presenting a project meeting the criteria chosen by the owning authority.

Until 1986, the State encouraged the creation of farms with the objective of "humanizing" the landscape by transforming forest and natural areas close to the coast into mainly livestock farms, but also citrus orchards. These directions were chosen in view of the low potential of most Guyanese soils. Moreover, many natural areas with very low fertility could not be transformed into productive agricultural areas.

The forest, a reputedly inhospitable environment, was to be replaced by pastures and orchards. "green plan" was to allow the production of beef, pork, poultry, to achieve self-sufficiency in animal products, as well as citrus fruits, and freshwater shrimp for export. We no longer talk about quantitative objectives today, but animal production, which continues to be supported by public policies, occupies an important place in "professional" agriculture and still attracts new farmers wishing to set up. They are also the subject of numerous training courses provided by the Local Public Establishment for Agricultural Education and Training (EPLEFAG), the agricultural high school of Matiti. However, even if the practical knowledge and technical mastery of these productions have progressed over the last fifty years, there has been many business failures. The risks inherent in setting up in highly capital-intensive production in the Guyanese context have often been underestimated, both by those seeking to set up, by the public authorities, and even by the banks.

The humanization of new agricultural spaces remains problematic

L'isolation of farmers is in itself a huge challenge, especially on inhabited farms. Even on portions of land where several farms have been established, it is not easy to maintain neighborly relations. This social and logistical difficulty arises particularly for young people who have settled there, often isolated. They must face not only the difficulties inherent in the profession everywhere but also a natural environment that can be hostile. As urban expansion has absorbed many old agricultural developments located near towns, the new farms have often gone to settle away or in the forest. The cost of the equipment and developments that would have to be carried out to make these spaces viable and provide the farms with drinking water, electricity, internet access, etc., is very high. The municipalities and their inter-municipalities, which nevertheless wish to encourage the installation of farmers on their territories, can be reluctant to make the necessary investments, the costs of which exceed their financial capacities. Thus, many farmers located away from towns are only connected to the rest of the territory by tracks, sometimes made temporarily impassable during heavy rains.

The isolation is not just physical, as farmers' commitment to collective initiatives is not a given. Among the difficulties inherited from the past, we must cite the failures of cooperative structures intended to structure the sectors, which have left a widespread feeling of doubt and mistrust that complicates any initiative to build a professional agricultural organization.

For several years, the establishment of new farmers has been facilitated by the Public Land and Development Establishment of Guyana (EPFAG), which develops agricultural areas and installs young qualified farmers there, generally trained at the Matiti Agricultural High School and other agricultural education establishments in Guyana. Farmers nevertheless remain pioneers in the conquest of natural spaces where rural facilities and services can be slow to follow them.

Focus on the Hmong community

A new agricultural model arrived in French Guiana in the late 1980s with the arrival of two communities of Hmong refugees from Southeast Asia in isolated areas, located far from the towns. Upon their arrival, they created two agricultural territories where many families living in the new villages of Cacao and Javouhey make a living from market gardening, selling their products in the coastal towns. This model, initially quite unique, is today recognized and welcomed by the entire population, and many municipalities are seeking to attract farmers of Hmong origin to their territory.

Amazon Rainforest: When Hostility Gives Way to Recognition of Age-Old Traditions 

Since the Rio Conference in 1992, the way we look at the Guyanese forest has changed paradigm. The hostile space to be destroyed has become an immense reservoir of biodiversity to be protected, part of the Amazon rainforest, a major greenhouse gas (GHG) trap and CO2 stock.₂Deforestation continues, but on small and targeted areas. Efforts are being made to install new operators on abandoned agricultural land. Attempts are being made to use the removed biomass as an energy source instead of burning it on site. Research is reorienting forestry, which was formerly predatory selective harvesting, towards a sustainable mode.

The zoning of the Guyanese territory includes vast protected areas, notably within the framework of the Amazonian Park which covers 40% of the territory. Agricultural areas have however been defined within the perimeter of the Park in order to allow populations who, as stated in the State Domain code derive their livelihood from the forest, to practice abattis, an Amazonian method of shifting cultivation on slash and burn. This production system can be considered sustainable as long as the anthropogenic pressure on the forest environment remains low, so that a sufficient period of return to the wooded state of the spaces between crops allows the regeneration of fertility.

In this region of humid forest with low human density, the felling is considered a traditional operating system. It has always allowed indigenous Amerindian populations to supplement, primarily with cassava, their diet, which was also based on hunting, fishing and gathering, and also poultry farming. It is noteworthy that the abatis has also been adopted not only by the Bushinengue populations who have settled along the middle Maroni for more than three centuries, but also by Creole families from coastal towns who practice subsistence family farming. On the coast, however, the pattern is tending to become more sedentary, with the abatis becoming a family garden where part-time farming is practiced. This model has thus been able to give rise to a small family farming Guyanese.

Slash-and-burn cultivation is practiced in the forest, and those who cultivate it live in villages. Unlike the Creole garden model well known in the Caribbean region, a farmer does not reside permanently on the slash-and-burn. Living on the farm is not part of local traditions. It should also be noted that the plots cultivated by the Hmong are separated, close to the villages where the farmers reside.

In western Guyana, population growth is particularly explosive, especially in municipalities with a majority bushinenguées. The time has come to find a alternative to the abattis that is acceptable to these populations among whom agricultural vocations are emerging. In practice, more and more farmers from the communes of the middle Maroni are deserting the collective spaces, in which the abattis traditionally moved, to request the concession of small plots and practice sedentary market gardening and food crops there.

Agriculture in Guyana: an assumed diversity and experiences to share

Almost everywhere, the orientations of young people's projects are diversifying. Each project is unique. There was a time when setting up a business required joining a pre-established network. Nowadays, new farmers can imagine their own project and demonstrate originality. The antagonism fades between pioneering agriculture, conquered from the forest, and traditional felling, using the fertility provided by the forest. Very naturally, the agroforestry installation projects have appeared in recent years. Although creating meadows on forest soils can help preserve their fertility, the transformation is not without risk and has sometimes been unsuccessful. Agroforestry is undoubtedly an approach to be encouraged, as trees are a use that is well suited to most of Guyanese soils, which are fragile and thin.

Unlike other overseas regions the number of farms is growing and Guyana is installing young farmers. Despite real difficulties, Guyana offers candidates for installation, under advantageous conditions, surfaces to highlight and growing consumer markets. Trained by the high school and other local agricultural education establishments, many of them want to get involved in a production activity and take on the challenges it brings. dynamism of a population of young farmers, well trained and well supported could only generate new experiences to share.

Whether in French Guiana or in other regions of the world, slash-and-burn agriculture can become destructive of natural resources with strong population growth. The transformation of this slash-and-burn agriculture into a sustainable sedentary model is therefore a necessity where the pressure on the natural environment becomes too great. More generally, the promotion of a Agriculture that respects natural balances and is capable of feeding a rapidly growing population remains a major objective in Guyana. as in many other territories facing the same challenges.

Furthermore, reducing the isolation of farmers must remain a priority. The suicides that have recently plagued the news in Guyana are a reminder of its importance, even if other factors have also contributed to the malaise felt among Guyanese farmers.