A single mother, teacher and farmer in Guyana finds balance in hard work
Patricia started farming to help cover her family’s expenses because her teaching salary was not sufficient.
Patricia, a busy single parent, teacher and farmer in southwest Guyana, uses the shadehouse provided by an FAO Climate-Smart project to supplement her teaching income and meet the needs of her family. ©FAO
Managing a farm is hard. Being a single parent is hard. Being a full-time teacher is hard. Being a farmer, single parent and teacher is “off the charts” as Patricia Persaud puts it, but she says that being busy brings her balance and consoles her, keeping her from the stress caused by separating with her husband: “I am stress-free, active and financially stable,” she exclaims.
Patricia started farming to help cover her family’s expenses because her teaching salary was not sufficient. Every weekday morning from 6:30 am to 8:00 am, evenings from 5:00 pm, and on weekends and holidays, she and her sons tend to their cash crops of pak choi, okra, pepper, cucumber and cabbage.
Patricia lives in Parika Back, a rural community in the southwest part of the country where most people come from a long line of farmers and depend on small-scale farming for their livelihoods. It is a place where people have close ties to farming life or, as people in Guyana put it, ‘farming deh in me blood’.
In the late 1980s, the population in Parika Back was small, the roads were undeveloped and food crops were cultivated only to meet household needs. But when they improved the main road in 2018, access to markets became easier, which encouraged the expansion of small-scale farming in the area.