Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed’s video exposing what he says is President Irfaan Ali’s technologically advanced farm has generated predictable questions about transparency, financing and accountability. Those questions are legitimate and deserve answers. Yet they are not the only disturbing issues emerging from the controversy. Another is one of public policy.
For years, Guyana’s farmers have pleaded for access to modern agricultural technologies, scientific farming techniques, mechanisation and stronger technical support. Governments have commissioned studies, imported foreign experts, announced agricultural transformation programmes and promised agro-processing facilities across the country. Yet much of Guyana’s agricultural sector continues to operate with outdated methods while farmers struggle with declining productivity, delayed payments, mounting debt and uncertain markets.
Then came the farm video. What the public is witnessing is not simply a successful agricultural enterprise. It appears to reveal the very model of modern agriculture that thousands of Guyanese farmers have long been told was either unattainable or still under development. Precision farming, sophisticated irrigation, advanced technology and scientific management were reportedly being demonstrated—not on a government demonstration farm, not at a national research institute, and not on land established to train farmers—but on the private enterprise of this country’s President. That is where the contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.
President Ali has repeatedly criticised GuySuCo’s declining production, warning management that poor performance would have consequences. Yet despite years of criticism, the sugar industry remains mired in structural decline. Rice farmers continue to raise concerns over delayed payments and financial uncertainty. Promised agro-processing facilities remain incomplete or absent, while many farmers continue to wait for meaningful technological support. If the Government knows what modern agriculture looks like—and the video strongly suggests that it does—why has that knowledge not been systematically transferred to the thousands of farmers whose livelihoods depend on it? That question goes to the heart of governance.
Agricultural innovation should never become the preserve of political elites. The technologies, expertise and scientific methods capable of transforming productivity should form the backbone of national agricultural policy, not the competitive advantage of individual enterprises. Every successful innovation developed or demonstrated by those in public office should be replicated across the wider farming sector. Instead, Guyana appears to have developed a two-tier agricultural system. One agriculture system is characterised by modern technology, scientific management and significant investment. The other is left grappling with ageing infrastructure, inconsistent support, uncertain markets and repeated political promises. That is not agricultural transformation. It is agricultural inequality.
No Guyanese should object to the operating of a successful farm. Success in agriculture ought to be celebrated. What deserves scrutiny, however, is why the innovations reportedly evident on that farm have not become the standard for the nation’s farmers. Public office carries with it an obligation to ensure that knowledge acquired through leadership benefits the country, not merely the individual. The farm video has therefore exposed more than a private agricultural enterprise. It has exposed the distance between what is possible for those at the centre of political power and what remains inaccessible to the ordinary farmer. That distance is not measured in acres or technology. It is measured in public policy.
Until the innovations showcased in that video become available to the wider agricultural sector, the Government’s repeated claims of agricultural transformation will continue to ring hollow.
Discussion