Not now, honey!

Paolo Kernahan

You’ve been trying to work your way in forever! Seems like that perseverance is going to pay off.

I’m talking about imported honey. Why? What did you think this is about?

Beekeeping is one of the few industries that’s 100 per cent local; it requires few foreign inputs. The industry consumes less foreign exchange (probably only for start-up equipment) than most other import-and-sell enterprises.

The apiary industry also has the potential to be a foreign-exchange earner. Honey produced locally is considered high-quality, having won several international awards.

Additionally, bees pollinate forest plants, trees and the crops we eat. They are a lynchpin species in our fragile, interconnected ecosystem.

So naturally, it’s an industry the government wants to destroy – in part, by opening the doors to imported honey.

Some might ask, who cares anyway? I don’t use honey, so this doesn’t affect me. For those who buy honey, the thinking might be that local honey is too expensive. Maybe cheap imported honey will put beekeepers in their place.

From what we know about the business landscape in this country, imported honey won’t be cheap, or that much cheaper. Importers will likely use local pricing as a baseline, and maximise their profits by marketing a product that costs them less to import than it costs local producers to make.

Admittedly, that’s an open flirtation with speculation, so let’s get down to some facts.

The perils confronting beekeepers have implications for all of us. Moreover, it’s another sign of dysfunction in a largely orphaned agricultural sector. Government ministers complain ad nauseam about our food importation bill and the flight of forex. Yet legislative amendments to the beekeeping act, ostensibly meant to allow the free movement of honey from Guyana through this country and to other parts of the region make a mockery of such concerns. Beekeepers fear this will open the floodgates to the importation of honey.

It can be argued that protectionist posturing has no place in today’s globalised economies. Well, beekeepers’ concerns over changes to the law are legitimate.

It goes beyond the spectre of unfair competition. Honey, apart from olive oil, is one of the most bastardised substances on earth. It’s often mixed with thickeners, emulsifiers, corn syrup and chemical additives to stretch both volume and profit margins.

Imported honey can also harbour diseases like American Foulbrood, a pernicious bacterial menace that spreads like wildfire through bee colonies. If our bees are exposed to disease-corrupted honey, it would be game over for the industry.

The beekeepers association says we don’t have the testing capabilities to screen imported honey for disease and adulterants, which can be hard to spot.

Moreover, when consulted on the legislative amendments, local beekeepers recommended the re-establishment of the apiaries unit in the Ministry of Agriculture, which was folded in the 80s. This suggestion, they say, was ignored. At the moment, there’s said to be just one person in the ministry responsible for attending to 400 beekeepers at 4,000 locations spread across the country.

That should tell you something about our ability at the government-agency level to offer any protection against the infiltration of diseased imported honey.

Rather than creating an environment that supports growth in the local industry, changes to the Beekeeping Act seem to go in the opposite direction. Our apiary sector is puzzling over the inclusion of provisions for a $100,000 fine against any unregistered beekeeper. To be registered, a beekeeper would need to be operating on land they either own or lease.

It’s almost as if the people drafting the legislation did so with no understanding of the nature of the local industry. Additionally, such an apiarist would need access to no less than 40 acres, which essentially criminalises beekeeping for many practitioners.

The government owns significant tracts of land in this country, particularly forested areas. Why can’t the Ministry of Agriculture facilitate the leasing of state lands to beekeepers? Their activities would boost the health of forests which are otherwise pillaged by quarrying and deforestation through various insidious commercial pursuits.

Institutional support for the local apiary industry could increase production, which would bring prices down. Beekeeping can provide entrepreneurship opportunities for our youth – reducing dependency on the State through social programmes.

Moreover, if beekeepers had more help they would be able to better weather volatile weather patterns, illegal logging and other factors that dent production of the amber elixir.

As is the case with almost everything in this nation, policy (where present) rarely reflects reality or efficacy.