Looking Forward: Food in Guyana

Looking Forward serves to highlight some of the issues and events I'd like to investigate while in Guyana, as much to provoke thought now as to remind me later.  Today: food.

 

Over the weekend, I watched Food Inc.  It was, predictably, disturbing.  For those unfamiliar with the movie, it's basically an investigation of where our food comes from.  That idyllic image we almost all have when we're in the grocery store, the idyllic small farm?  It mostly doesn't exist anymore.  It has been replaced by large companies who, as corporations have a right to do, worry about their bottom lines first and foremost.  I could go into horrifying detail, but I think the bottom line is that everyone has the right to know where their food comes from, and how its grown.  I think everyone should see it, though it might make you question your eating habits.  Also recommended for those interested are the fine books Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.

Anyway, when I was busily re-evaluating my life choices after viewing the film, I began to wonder about how people get their food in Guyana.  Guyana is a very poor country, which usually doesn't bode well for luxuries like organic, locally grown foods.  According the CIA World Factbook, Guyana's main exports are sugar, gold, bauxite, shrimp, timber, and rice.  One of the major commodities imported is food.  I have also heard that the cost of living in Guyana is (relatively) high because most goods have to be imported.  To an outsider it seems like Guyanese citizens would likely have little say over where and how their food is produced.

Geographically, Guyana could likely support a wide variety of farming.  There are both savannahs and jungles with abundant rainfall and rivers.  I will be interested to see if local farming occurs on any scale.  I doubt I will get the opportunity, but perhaps there will be an opportunity to visit a sugar plantation or shrimp farm, and to see how people living near these operations feel about their operations.  I should have the opportunity to ask local produce vendors and grocers about the source of their food.