Dear Editor,
A quiet industrial transformation is underway in parts of Brazil that should command serious attention in Guyana. What was once considered agricultural waste, the banana pseudostem left behind after harvest, is being reorganised into a standardised industrial raw material for textiles, paper products, and bio-based composites. This is not a craft revival story. It is an industrialisation story. And it carries direct implications for Guyana’s development trajectory.
In Brazil, institutions such as the Federação das Indústrias do Estado de Santa Catarina and the SENAI Institute of Textile Technology, Apparel and Design have helped move banana fiber processing from experimental workshops to structured factory floors.
Through mechanical decortication, controlled drying, and quality control protocols, pseudostem fibers are now being processed with repeatable tensile strength, consistent moisture levels, and traceable supply chains.
The material is entering weaving mills, composite fabrication lines, and packaging trials. What was once left in the field to rot is now entering global markets.
Guyana should view this development not as foreign innovation but as regional opportunity.
Banana cultivation is not unfamiliar terrain in Guyana. Across coastal and riverain communities, bananas are grown for domestic markets and small-scale distribution. After harvest, the pseudostem, heavy, water-laden, and cumbersome, is typically discarded. It decomposes in place, sometimes usefully returning nutrients to soil, but more often simply representing uncounted biomass with no structured economic pathway. In other production systems, that same biomass is now being treated as industrial feedstock.
The transformation hinges on a simple realisation: the banana plant is mostly not food. Only a fraction becomes the fruit that enters the market. The rest is cellulose-rich structural material with significant mechanical strength. When extracted mechanically rather than chemically, these fibers can compete with other natural fibers used in textiles and reinforcement applications.
They can be blended with cotton. They can be pulped. They can be molded into packaging boards. The key is not the science alone, it is the organisation of logistics, processing, and standards.
This is precisely where Guyana’s national strategy comes into focus.
Under the Low Carbon Development Strategy championed by the Government of Guyana, the country has committed itself to a model of economic diversification that integrates forest stewardship, climate finance, and sustainable production. Yet diversification cannot remain rhetorical. It requires specific industries that translate agricultural reality into manufacturing capability. Banana pseudostem fiber offers one such pathway.
Guyana is entering an era of unprecedented fiscal space due to oil revenues. The danger of that moment is over-concentration.
Hydrocarbon wealth, if not carefully channeled, can narrow rather than broaden the economic base. Investing in agro-residue industrialisation would represent a deliberate conversion of oil capital into post-carbon infrastructure. It would build manufacturing competence in a sector aligned with global decarbonisation trends.
The proximity to Brazil strengthens this opportunity considerably. Northern Brazil possesses industrial training systems, machinery manufacturers, and research institutions already experimenting with banana fiber at scale.
Guyana possesses agricultural land, expanding transport corridors linking to Brazil, English-language market access within CARICOM, and an emerging policy emphasis on green production. A structured Brazil–Guyana industrial partnership focused on banana fiber could create a cross-border value chain that benefits both countries. Brazil contributes technical maturity. Guyana contributes biomass and regional export positioning.
But this must not be romanticised. Banana fiber industrialisation is not automatic success. It requires careful attention to water management during washing stages, disciplined control of drying temperatures to preserve fiber properties, and proper utilisation of pulp residues to avoid creating environmental burdens. If poorly managed, the process can simply shift waste from field to factory. If well designed, it can create a closed-loop system where extracted pulp becomes compost or biogas feedstock, minimising discharge and reinforcing circularity.
The more profound question is strategic. Does Guyana want to remain primarily an exporter of raw commodities, or does it intend to become a processor of its own agricultural residues?
The pseudostem currently has no market value in Guyana’s accounting system. In Brazil, it is acquiring one. That difference is not ecological; it is institutional.
Imagine Guyana positioning itself as a regional supplier of biodegradable molded fiber packaging derived from banana waste. Imagine local spinning trials that blend banana fiber with imported cotton to create niche sustainable textiles. Imagine rural communities earning supplemental income not just from fruit sales but from organised biomass collection systems feeding nearby extraction hubs. Such developments would deepen rural economic resilience, reduce agricultural waste emissions, and strengthen Guyana’s climate diplomacy credibility.
The narrative of Guyana’s future is often framed in terms of oil production curves and offshore infrastructure. That story is real. But another story can unfold alongside it, one in which agricultural residue becomes industrial input, where sustainability is not only a diplomatic posture but a manufacturing reality.
Banana pseudostem fiber will not replace every synthetic material, nor will it become a singular pillar of the economy. Yet as part of a diversified portfolio of green manufacturing sectors, it holds tangible promise.
Brazil has already demonstrated that the transition from discarded trunk to standardised industrial fiber is technically feasible. The question now is whether Guyana will observe from the sidelines or participate in shaping a regional circular economy.
Banana trunks left in the field are not merely agricultural leftovers. They are latent industrial assets. The time to treat them as such is now.