Building Guyana's Agricultural Future: Inside the University of Guyana's Institute for Food and Nutrition Security.

Professor Leonard O'Garro is leading an ambitious transformation to establish Guyana as the Caribbean's agricultural powerhouse through the Institute for Food and Nutrition Security at the University of Guyana. The University of Guyana is transforming regional agriculture through innovative partnerships, smart farming technology, AI solutions, and educating and inspiring a new generation of farmers in Guyana.

Innovation Report: Tell us about the origins and development of the Institute for Food and Nutrition Security at the University of Guyana.

Leonard O'Garro: The institute emerged from a recognition across Guyana about the country's potential as a food center, initially focused on Caribbean countries within CARICOM. Before oil exploration, Guyana had cast its lot for economic development in the agricultural sphere, and there was consciousness in university leadership that the University of Guyana should play a greater role in food security.

The process began around 2015-2016 with extensive consultations across the country, including eight or nine visits I made to participate in stakeholder meetings organized by the university. We also benefited from input from the Guyanese diaspora, particularly professors in North American universities. After preparing the project document and getting approval through various university committees, it sat for about four years while they looked for leadership and financing.

The breakthrough came when I called the university to speak to a colleague and ended up connected to the vice chancellor by chance. She said she'd heard about me and asked when I could come to set up the institute. My father always said when someone asks you a question like that and it sounds like something good, say you're coming first thing in the morning. That's exactly how it started.

Innovation Report: What makes up the DNA and identity of the institute today?

Leonard O'Garro: The institute was set up with high expectations of excellence and innovation. Our specific mandate is assisting Guyana to become what's referred to as a regional food center, joining the ranks of countries like Brazil, the US, and Canada as a major food center for the Americas.

There's special facilitation for Caribbean countries because Guyana has a legal responsibility in the CARICOM area as the member country with key responsibility for agricultural issues. This means we're developing capacity in primary agricultural production and food processing at scale, underpinned by extensive R&D and innovation.

We're involved in sourcing external capital and recruiting startup companies to facilitate foreign direct investment in agriculture and agribusiness. Many of our research projects are embedded in entrepreneurship with investors on board. We work with higher education and research institutions we consider part of an excellence brand, primarily because we want the best information and knowledge base available to Guyana for planning.

We also contribute R&D in science and technology with relevant economic sectors. For example, we're working with coconut growers in Guyana to diversify into coconut sugar production, which is an alternative sweetener with a low glycemic index, making it friendly for people with diabetes and those wanting a more healthful lifestyle.

Innovation Report: Please provide an example of one of the flagship projects coming out of the institute.

Leonard O'Garro: Our first major project is called "Organic Guyana Shield Preparation for an Investment Project." The name references the Guiana Shield, which is a geological formation - a portion of the tectonic plate that carries continents, where Guyana, parts of Brazil, French Guiana, and parts of Africa were once joined. The South American portion is coming together to manage this region collectively because it's a biodiversity hotspot.

According to Guyana's National Land Use Plan, about 85% of the country remains under forest cover, managed under the Low Carbon Development Strategy. The government marked off about 15 million hectares of pristine forest to provide ecological services like rainfall regulation, greenhouse gas absorption, and biodiversity conservation.

Organic agriculture is permissible under this strategy because it's least disruptive to the native environment. We're establishing this as a high-value crop system - even though it comes from low-carbon production, it has high economic worth. If Guyana is going to expand its food center ambition, it must encroach on accessible forest land, but this must be managed without harm while promoting conservation and livelihoods.

We're looking at 22,000 hectares for this project. This scale relates to our approach to Caribbean food security. We know the land availability for agricultural production in each CARICOM island state. We're carving out equivalent spaces in Guyana to match production capacity in these countries. So if a hurricane wipes out Dominica, we have an equivalent ongoing production area in Guyana to replace that capacity.

As you probably know, every year these islands - the Eastern Caribbean all the way up to Jamaica and the Bahamas - dodge hurricanes. Very often when there's a direct hit, there's almost total destruction of agricultural production capacity. It might take as many as two or three years for countries to recover.

We're providing food security in a different way.

Dominica has established itself as the organic isle in the Caribbean, so this project is crafted to accommodate them. We can encourage Dominican investors to come to Guyana and set up farming operations. The agricultural space becomes automatically twice as large - one at home and one in Guyana for security when islands get wiped out by hurricanes.

It's theoretically possible to reproduce equivalent space in Guyana for all the small islands of the Caribbean. We can fashion the agricultural system based on what they do at home - in Dominica it's organic agriculture, in Grenada it's spices, in St. Vincent and the Grenadines it's primarily root crops. You can set things up as close as possible to match the image of each country.

This project also establishes Guyana as a leading high-quality nature reserve and health tourism destination, facilitating eco-innovation initiatives in renewable energy and forestry. It improves rural development through better natural resource management and sustainable land management practices, including composting programs that reduce harmful substances entering rivers and soils. The project promotes governance structures adhering to international environmental, labor, production, and health standards while partnering with private sector and government to attract foreign direct investment.

Innovation Report: Let's look at another project that combines innovation and agriculture at the institute.

Leonard O'Garro: The second project is "Smart Farming for Sustainable Development in Guyana: Precision Agriculture, Apps, IoT, Drones and AI in Agriculture." This project came from a competition by the Inter-American Development Bank for grant funding for agricultural innovation. We won and received a grant of $500,000 US from the IDB plus another $800,000 US from other sources over three years.

This project introduces smart precision agriculture at the University of Guyana and by extension all of Guyana. It's based on web-based technologies including the Internet of Things, software applications, and cloud computing for data collection, analysis, and retrieval. Also included are web-based platforms delivering remedial education programs to remote communities to improve livelihoods.

There's currently a mismatch between the types, quality, and quantity of human resources, information, and built infrastructure versus the vastly more demanding food center ambition. Sole reliance on traditional expansion will be unjustifiably expensive. This technology bridges the gap between tasks ahead and available resources.

Within agriculture challenges, insects, diseases, and weeds are farmers' most significant problems. Climate change results in more intense and diverse pest infestations. IoT, AI, and precision agriculture help farmers be more intelligent and responsive to conditions they face. We're putting powerful tools in farmers' hands through pest management apps that make identification and management more accessible, lowering crop losses and improving yields.

Drones are becoming effective farming tools, especially for spraying and overcoming field access limitations while reducing environmental concerns. Drones collect data from field sensors, patrol fences, transmit real-time animal health information, monitor pasture biomass, provide early flood detection, and conduct aerial problem diagnostics. The project also assesses crop fit with local ecosystems in the context of climate change requirements.

Innovation Report: What is the worst-case scenario for the region if Guyana's agricultural potential isn't managed properly?

Leonard O'Garro: The issue that looms largest for me is political instability. This is my biggest concern in a Caribbean context - whether Guyana can adequately move forward and become a trusted partner in assisting the region with food security needs.

The other major threat is the advent of oil. To what extent will Guyana move away from its agricultural ambitions and become almost exclusively an oil economy? We're hedging against this by fashioning projects that keep people in the countryside where they can sustain livelihoods comfortably. We have to make living in the countryside comfortable in terms of livelihoods while advocating for a pristine environment through ecotourism and natural beauty.

The pull of oil can wreck production in the countryside. People might leave rural areas for better-paying jobs in the oil sector. This is why our projects are designed to make agricultural work attractive and economically viable.

Innovation Report: How important are international partnerships to your work?

Leonard O'Garro: Internationalization evokes feelings of universal appeal to me. Universal appeal generally implies desirability - more and more people want to gravitate toward it. This desirability usually points to some notion of excellence or exemplariness, which can come from any sphere of human activity.

The institute has attracted interest from many of the world's proven experts in relevant fields. They've come together to create what we call an external faculty - a targeted collection of foremost experts who've accepted invitations to be professional external faculty for the institute. We have tremendous richness of experience and intellect, and they've come together purely based on pursuing excellence and interest in their work.

For example, we recently secured the immediate past president of the University of California Davis campus because of shared interest in our work. This devotion to excellence brings that kind of pull and benefit. The pursuit of excellence is the essential driver of all planks needed for development.

Partnership means working with others to deliver the best possible experience or results - meeting or exceeding expectations. It's about adding value to whatever we're presented with. Part of our yardstick is getting things to the point where we can measure success in macroeconomic terms - GDP issues, employment issues - at scale, because we generally work at scale given our mandate. If you get it right, it comes with commensurate impact.