Case Study: Climate Effects Influence the Growth of Perth Mahaicony Farmers’ Association

The effects of climate change, irregular rainfall patterns, flooding and market forces, are collective challenges faced by the farmers in Perth Mahaicony Village Region 5 Guyana. To overcome these climate effects, rural farmers have been desperately seeking to diversify their production bases in multiple areas in order to spread their risk. One diversification effort, pig farming, despite initially showing low profitability from primary production sales, is now evolving into a profitable value added activity through the improvement of the value chain for the production of pork products namely hams and sausages. The Perth Mahaicony Pig Farmers have benefited from financial and technical assistance training interventions of organisational strengthening, agro-processing and marketing. The Ministry of Agriculture, IFAD and IICA in addition to other developmental institutions, have collaborated in targeting through different interventions the promotion of sustainable improvement to the value chain for pork production. These actions have afforded farmers the continual ability to produce and market pork products in an excellent way, while generating added income from the realization of larger profits, compared to previous profits gained from sales of fresh pork meat previously sold.