–Use of Technology “very important”, GSA Lecturer says
Senior Lecturer Osbert Nurse on Tuesday called on farmers to maximize the use of technology to further boost the agriculture industry. Nurse believes this is the only way the sector will be able to ‘catch’ up to other agricultural sectors in the world.
Nurse, a lecturer of Entomology, Plant Pathology, and Seed Technology at the Guyana School of Agriculture (GSA) explained the necessity of advancing Guyana’s agriculture industry through the improvement and implementation of modern technology.
The lecturer explained that in order for the industry to foster major development, farmers must optimize the use of technology to help them better their produce. “…because of our climate conditions and agricultural landscape, persons are less inclined to manual labour… [so] it is very important for more technology to be used in Guyana’s agriculture sector,” Nurse posited.
In his opinion, Nurse believes that because technology is not being used as much as it should in the sector, Guyana’s industry is far behind in comparison to others. “Guyana is about ten years behind as it relates to technology use [and] the main reason for this difference is our infrastructure or lack thereof…needed to support the technology,” he opined.
However, GSA lecturer believes that through the activities slated for Agriculture month, the door will now be open for Guyana to optimize the technology it now has whilst working on procuring new and more updated technology.
“The aim of today’s presentation is to raise awareness of the technological advances in agriculture and to stimulate the interest of the youth,” he detailed. “With all that is happening now worldwide, we see the need for the use of advanced technology in agriculture,” Nurse went on to say.
The Ministry of Agriculture officially launched its month of activities yesterday to celebrate Agriculture Month 2021 under the theme “Transforming our Food Systems: Achieving Food & Nutrition Security”.