BB-2-P
[Handwriting in margin: “WALLY”]
Sharon Amos
Adrian Thompson visit 24/7/78 (Kay Nelson, Versie P [Perkins Connessero], Hugh [Hue Fortson], Maria [Katsaris], Sharon)
-Mr Thompson only stayed for about an hour
-his wife was in Canada/ she’s the one who visited the project and had enjoyed it so much
-he was the permanent secretary for forest lands and minds and is now working on seasonings with someone who won the Guinnes record for applied chemistry they feel they can develop certain seasonings – and this is a big money thing to work on
-for instance Guyana imports cinnamon but it grows like a weed
-one problem is that high temperatures are destructive of flavor
-you can make a million if you can grow certain things in the winter and then export them – Israel can grow roses in the winter and freezes them and exports them for instance to Canada but they follow the exporting every step of the way even having an Israeli to meet the roses in Canada to see that they are taken care of properly
-if you could grow strawberries in the winter you’d maek a killing but strawberries are easily perishable
-cashew nut is in great demand and the seed shells give a good dring oil (not edible but for industrial purposes)
PLYWOOD:
-a company in Surinam Burnzyl (spelling?) has the edge on this – they take the wood Deli logs from Guyana and Guyana gets little royalty from it/ other tree logs can make plywood also
-if you tried to make plywood to export and make money Burnzyl could lower their price until you went broke and then go back into it as they are international
-he didn’t think Guyana did have a plywood factory in the past, he said they had a particle board factory and it colapsed because they used Jallaba ?? wood and it had too much silica and the blades only lasted 2 hrs instead of 8 hours and it went broke
Freighters:
-he said that people are dying now to get rid of freighters because they have a new kind of freighter that is containerized and therefore the old kind of freighters are dying out in useage
-he said that if Guyana could properly season wood they wouldn’t havesuch a need for plywood
-if you tried to produce plywood for Guyanese use you would have to have a mini-factory as you would soon saturate the market
-he said that cassava might be a good crop to develop as they use floculation (casava starts) for aluminum plants and there is always a demand in general for casava but you’d have to do it in big cultivation with high wheel tractors
-he said in terms of an industry you have to think of the whole process economically and the marketing aspects
-he said one friend of his bought steers and put them on land, pasture land, fatted them up and then called on some buyers and sold them and made a good profit as the land was free, he already had it
-another friend had milk cows and he was milking all the time and you have to have machinery to cool it and problems transporting it and he soon went out of business
-another person tried to raise crow hops ???? and you have to pick them and market them immediately and he couldn’t manage
-in terms of his own orchard he doesn’t have too much trouble finding buyers for the fruit but the Guyana Marketing Corp. is very unorganized in terms of who is selling what and how much so it is chaotic