Dear Editor,
After reading Mr Jessop’s article in the Sunday Stabroek on the EPA and rice, I wondered quite amusingly how situations always change. When the EU was conceiving the EPA, the rice farmers were on their knees with respect to prices and yet the EU was willing to price them out of the market with tariffs and duties.
Fortunately for the farmers, they can avoid the EU market in 2008 and 2009 and wait for the tariff free years after 2010. The focus of the exporters must be on the Caricom market.
Why Caricom?
1. Lower shipping cost (Caricom vs Europe); 2. Satisfying a market that is easily motivated to secure a CET exemption by using a variety of tactics from fudging the numbers to ministerial pressure on the Guyanese government; 3. Dispelling the myth once and for all that Guyana is an unreliable supplier of high quality rice to the region.
As I stated before, nothing stays the same. This period of high prices will not last forever but is expected to outlive 2009.
Farmers have to use the opportunity not to invest heavily into combines, but to focus on their agronomical practices, improve their land tilling methodology, maximise the efficiency in the use of fertilizers, maximise their yield and manage their rice plots as a business. Every dollar of revenue must be accounted for in a businesslike manner and the profits must be saved for the grey days because nothing stays the same.
Government can offer support in testing for alternative fuels for tractors such as expanding the bio-energy project and procuring ethanol from Brazil for some farmers on a pilot basis.
I am happy for the farmers of Guyana, they deserve a break from the challenging years of the past.
Yours faithfully,
Sasenarine Singh
