Dear Editor,
Inevitably, but reluctantly, I must add my voice to the ongoing price brouhaha in the rice industry, affecting both the planting and milling sectors which have now been left in the lurch after rice prices skyrocketed in 2008. Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud has been doing his best trying to appease people in a very chaotic situation, but we must understand that there is only so much the government can do in this free market economy where price-fixing is no longer possible. A relief package of $400,000,000 for the rice industry, though not much and not a “gimmick” as reported in the Kaieteur News, is reflective of the fact that the government is willing to try and bring some amount of comfort to the hard-pressed rice farmers.
If our country is to produce 360,000 metric tonnes of rice for 2009, as projected by the local authorities, this will represent a mere 0.07 per cent of forecast world production of 484,000,000 tonnes for this year. The world’s daily rice consumption is estimated at around 1,300,000 tonnes which is 72 per cent more than Guyana’s total annual production. Total global consumption of rice for 2009 is estimated at 479,000,000 tonnes, leaving a surplus of around 5,000,000 tonnes which will be regarded as intervention or buffer stocks.
As of now, Guyana has absolutely no influence on global rice prices which are dictated mainly by the Asian giants of India, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Pakistan as well as the US, Europe and Japan, with the latter three countries and regions providing huge annual subsidies to ensure their rice sectors remain competitive. However, such subsidies, challenged at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) only serve to distort global free trade and devastate small emerging economies dependent on the export of agricultural crops such as rice.
Indirectly, our farmers produce rice at the behest of the Asian, American and European and other large producers. If they so desire, Guyana’s small and fledgling rice industry can be wiped out in no time. We have seen what effects the dumping of highly subsidized US rice can do to our economy. One need not look beyond Jamaica which today still imports US paddy at a time when there is again a call for greater economic co-operation among Caricom member states. The large rice mill in Kingston is owned by Archer Daniels Midlands (ADM) Group, a huge US grains conglomerate.
My proud upbringing on a rice farm in Mahaica has provided me with the opportunity of identifying with the present plight of our farmers and appreciating that today they are faced with the real possibility of devastation. But can we be unfair to the millers who are also caught in this quagmire, too? Global rice prices have today fallen by more than 50 per cent from the 2008 unprecedented high price levels and I remembered well Minister Robert Persaud telling our farmers then to spend their “windfall” wisely. I believe his good advice fell on many a deaf ear and I can attest to the fact that many of these hardy farmers have over expended and over extended in machinery and equipment and luxury vehicles. In other words, many squandered the gains of 2008 and are now worse off and may be looking for some amount of state bail-out.
Some used equipment importers have also been caught in a bind because sales of rice harvesters and tractors have tapered off and may even have ground to a halt. One only needs to look around and see the huge amount of rice machinery and equipment lying waste in many areas along the coast and in the city.
Within recent weeks, and seemingly having crawled out of the woodwork, a little, vociferous group purporting to represent rice farmers, has been making very wild and misleading statements regarding the prices for paddy which millers have offered to farmers this current crop. One of the individuals of this group, said farmers overseas were receiving as much as the equivalent of $4,200 per bag of paddy. Whether or not that is the case, how can that be applied to Guyana? I know of farmers in India receiving far more for one bag of Basmati paddy.
The local group of so-called agitators, including a one-time big miller who now operates at a subsistence level and who for many years was arrogant to the very farmers he owed for paddy supplied to his mills and whom he now says he supports, is continuing to mislead the farmers by providing erroneous information.
The farmers, by their own admission, have stated it costs as much as $84,000 to produce one acre of paddy. Based on that production cost, only a price in excess of $3,000 per bag will realize a profit for these farmers. These are individuals who should not be in the business of rice farming simply because it is costing them too much to produce one acre of paddy. Is not this a case of poor or bad management? Or should we not attribute this to absentee farming, a practice I alluded to many years ago?
Having said that, it may seem that the economies of scale have been showing an imbalance to the extent that the days of the small farmer may be numbered because of what is happening internationally – low rice prices and high input costs.
On the other hand, to deal with the dynamics of the situation, the unpredictability of rice prices and the long-term future of the rice industry, government must seriously look at diversifying into the production of short and medium-grain varieties of rice, both of which are high-yielding and both of which set the pace for global rice prices.
I recall telling the late Mr CP Kennard, head of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) in the 1990s, that emphasis must be placed on the production of short and medium-grain varieties of paddy as against our continued experimentation and breeding of the long and extra-long grain varieties, many of which are susceptible to adverse weather conditions, pests and diseases such as blast.
By our standards, and as a country, the rice industry has been regarded as one of the pillars of the economy, and has been the recipient of praise over the years although we have never been recognized as a key player in the area of international rice production and trade simply because of our low output.
Though we have large tracts of idle lands and an abundance of sunshine and water, we have to recognize that there is limited additional arable land suitable for the type of rice cultivation we practice, and with climate change and rising sea levels, we face a clear and present danger of losing large tracts of land along the coast, to the sea.
The authorities in India are most aware of the realities of climate change and through their Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) in Cuttack, have been developing new strains and varieties of rice to deal with changing climatic conditions.
For example, CRRI has recently reported that it had released several drought-tolerant varieties of rice such as Vandana, Anjali, Sadabahar and Virendra. The varieties are endowed with longer roots to draw moisture from deeper layers of soil. CRRI is also presently developing several submergence-tolerant varieties such as Savitri, Gayatri, Tulasi and Sarala for severely flooded conditions. CRRI reported that these varieties will be able to “withstand complete submergence for 15-17 days without perishing and can grow normally and produce the desired grain yield after the water recedes.”
Here in Guyana, we do have rice varietal breeding and development programmes at the Burma Rice Research Station (BRRS) in addition to being affiliated to the Fund for Latin American Irrigated Rice (FLAR) as well as the Caribbean Rice Improvement Development Network (CRIDnet), the latter of which I am hopeful may still be in existence and involved in meaningful work. Through the BRRS, we should invite a core group of rice scientists from India to help us in breeding and developing new high-yielding, drought-tolerant, submergence-tolerant and saline-tolerant varieties of paddy. I wish to advise the so-called rice farmers’ advocacy group to allow common sense to prevail and not to continue to mislead the farmers.
Trying to get the millers to pay unrealistically high prices for paddy just won’t work. They have to look beyond that if they are serious about helping the farmers, that is if they are capable of looking further and if their real motive is helping our hardy rice farmers.
Yours faithfully,
Mahadeo Panchu
