Brackish water shrimp...

FROM PAGE 7 the government’s commitment to increasing local production, lowering the food import bill, and increasing both our production and export capacities. We are working towards producing 1.5 million kilograms annually by the year 2025,” the minister said.

Mustapha related that with the successes seen thus far, the ministry is now working to have the programme replicated in other regions, the next being Region Five.

“So far, we’ve assisted farmers with constructing ponds in Region Six and we’ve started preliminary works in Region Five. We’re also looking at other places like Region Two and so on. In the first few months of the project, we were able to increase production by 203 per cent and those levels have continued to increase over the years,” the minister said.

Minister Mustapha further stated that some 37 farms in Region Six have been developed comprising a total of 133 ponds.

He added: “Before we started this project in July 2021, farmers were producing just about 10,000 kilograms monthly, just about 120,000 kilograms annually. We announced that this was the direction we wanted to take and that farmers would be given the support to expand. To date, we’ve been able to construct 133 ponds, and this has contributed to us exceeding initial production figures.”

In an effort to boost productivity, the Government of Guyana partnered with United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to conduct a study and gather information for the piloting and implementation of a strategy to enhance shrimp production in Guyana and several other Caribbean states.

Recently the ministry received three manuals that were developed collaboratively by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the World Wildlife Fund – Guianas (WWF-Guianas), and the ministry’s Fisheries Department; one of which will be used to guide brackish water shrimp production in Guyana.