Dear Editor,
The commissioning of more seed facilities will not solve the rice industry crisis; the farmers are producing more paddy these days with limited technology, and are making record achievements in terms of production, but the government failed to find lucrative markets for our rice. They only depended on the barter trade involving rice and paddy in exchange for oil on the Venezuela market. Opening more seed facilities in areas where there are none is a good move, but farmers’ access to quality seed is compromised for reasons of availability and price. These seed facilities have become a source of money-making today, but there is a lack of information on national seed policies.
This is why farmers find themselves at a disadvantage from the outset. Seed production is a profitable activity; a recent study on the seed value chain found that a seed facility offers interesting financial gains for a range of players, including seed producers, traders, processors and quality controllers. Farmers need financial support from an agri bank at the outset, including capital or loans to buy seed. More needs to be done by government to encourage farmers to produce their own seed.
Training and education are important in helping farmers to adopt new technologies and seed production methods to cut costs, so the farmers can get higher grades and better prices. On the issue of markets, the government was silent on the biggest parboiled rice market within Caricom, ie, Trinidad and Tobago, which for decades has not been importing substantial quantities from Guyana.
It looks as if Jamaica is also importing high quality rice from extra-regional sources free of the common external tariff. Guyana has not done much rice business in international markets for years, and this is the reason why the millers’ warehouses are filled with rice and paddy and the farmers cannot get higher prices for their paddy. Exporters here in Guyana have had tremendous difficulty being paid for their rice. Guyana was given an opportunity some decades ago to sell its rice to Brazil, but the government failed to accept the opportunity. Strong demand for Vietnamese rice is also keeping the price down.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
