By Marvin Cato | HGP Nightly News |
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA — Guyana’s agricultural industry has achieved substantial expansion across key subsectors over the past five years, driven by double-digit livestock gains, grain cultivation milestones, and modern biotechnological interventions.
Delivering a comprehensive five-year progress review on Friday, September 11, 2026, Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha disclosed that domestic yields across 15 priority agricultural commodities grew consistently between 2020 and 2025. Mustapha emphasized that targeted state subsidies, climate-resilient farm-to-market drainage infrastructure, and direct farmer financing have accelerated national food sovereignty while positioning Guyana as the regional anchor for the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) food import reduction mandate.
Five-Year Growth Metrics: Livestock, Grains, and Rice
Mustapha pointed to multi-sectoral statistical gains across traditional and non-traditional agriculture, highlighting an independent regional assessment confirming that Guyana remains the only Caribbean territory possessing the domestic agricultural capacity to feed its entire population without reliance on foreign food imports:
- Livestock Expansion: The national livestock sector expanded by 12.5% between 2020 and 2025, with production increases recorded across poultry, beef, dairy, and small ruminants.
- Corn and Soya Surge: Dedicated feed-grain cultivation in the Tacama savannahs saw corn production surge by more than 330%, significantly substituting imported poultry and animal feed inputs with domestically grown grain.
- Record Rice Output: National paddy production climbed to approximately 825,000 tonnes, marking one of the largest production cycles in the history of the Guyanese rice industry.
“We have seen an increase in poultry production, in other livestock production,” Minister Mustapha stated. “Growth in the livestock sector from 2020 to 2025 has expanded by 12.5 per cent… We are not only expanding, but we are also moving in areas to modernise the agriculture sector.”
Genetic Modernization: Embryo Transplants and Artificial Insemination
Addressing long-term productivity enhancements within animal husbandry, Mustapha highlighted the implementation of advanced biotechnology programs managed by the Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA):
- Historic Embryo Transplants: For the first time in Guyana’s history, local veterinarians and livestock technicians are successfully executing bovine embryo transplant procedures, accelerating herd multiplication with high-yield dairy and beef traits.
- Expanded Artificial Insemination (AI): The Ministry has scaled up its nationwide artificial insemination outreach across cattle-rearing districts, providing smallholder farmers with improved genetic stock.
- Small Ruminant & Swine Upgrades: Intensive breeding initiatives continue under the Black Belly Sheep Project alongside improved genetic breeding lines within swine husbandry to boost meat conversion ratios.
“For the first time in the history of our country, we are doing embryo transplant,” Mustapha remarked. “We are not only expanding our primary production, but we are deploying the technology needed to compete globally.”
Value-Added Processing and the CARICOM “25 by 2030” Goal
The Agriculture Minister affirmed that the state is shifting its strategic focus from raw primary commodity exports to commercial agro-processing and value-added packaging:
- Agro-Processing Infrastructure: State-funded commercial agro-processing facilities commissioned across rural and riverine administrative regions now enable farming clusters to package, process, and bottle juices, flours, spices, and meats to international sanitary standards.
- Regional Food Integration: The ongoing production boom supports CARICOM’s “25 by 2030” initiative—an economic framework spearheaded by Guyana designed to reduce the Caribbean region’s multi-billion-dollar extra-regional food import bill by 25% by the end of the decade.
