….. 6.7 million pounds consumed within 3 yearsMinister of Agriculture, Dr Leslie Ramsammy has stated that Guyana today is totally self- sufficient in the traditional meats such as chicken and beef but implored farmers to put a little more effort into the swine industry.Pork, he said, is in growing demand and in the last three years or so, consumption has risen to over three million kilograms (6.7 million pounds).“And it is growing but we are vastly undersupplying the market and if you are vastly undersupplying, good businessmen will know when demand outstrip the supply,Wholesale Authentic Jerseys, the price will go up,” he stated.Unlike cattle and poultry, he noted, the swine farmer is usually a small farmer,Cheap Jerseys Supply, “a guy with usually 2, 3, 4, 5 heads of pigs.”Ramsammy noted that the government tried to improve the breed to get more meat but unfortunately “the farmers that were given the new breeds, [but] instead of breeding new stock and sustaining the stock, the holiday comes, the demand was there, they slaughtered the very expensive animal which is supposed to be used to breed and that is why pigs are in short supply today.”He noted that last year Guyana consumed 2.5 million kilograms (5.5 million pounds) of beef.“Right now, if we had it, we can sell, for local consumption, 3.5 million kilograms (7.7 million pounds) of beef,” he said.In 2011, Guyanese consumed 30 million kilograms of chicken and about 35 million table eggs.“Guyana, today, right now we are totally and absolutely self- sufficient in chicken and in eggs—absolutely! And in fact,cheap jerseys elite, we have the capacity to export, but we will never be able to do so unless we develop the conditions necessary to export and so, our producers will have to learn that they may be able to get away with selling their products in Guyana but would not be able to do so abroad unless they meet certain conditions,” Ramsammy said.He was addressing East Bank Berbice farmers recently in New Amsterdam.He said the shortage in poultry in 2011 “had nothing to do with our capacity,Cheap Jerseys Wholesale, but with how we were responding as businesspeople to the market, so that we had to make sure the prices don’t fall.”The Minister said that the funny thing when you are producer and consumer at the same time is “your producers want the prices to go up and the consumers want it to go down so I have to keep a middle road because people won’t produce unless it is profitable for them to do so,Wholesale Authentic Jerseys, and their business won’t be supported unless the consumer feels it is an affordable programme.”“Agriculture still accounts for 25 per cent of the economy, so no one, no one, could underplay or undervalue the role of agriculture in our country. It is a catalyst for development”, he said.The Agriculture Minister noted that agriculture cannot be for subsistence livelihood only.