Even as expanding Guyana’s international rice market continues to be the primary focus of the local industry, one of the country’s leading rice milling entities has told this newspaper that optimizing the returns from the industry requires, among other things, significantly increased investment in inputs and services necessary for enhancing rice yield, both qualitatively and quantitatively.
Chief Executive Officer of the Berbice-based Nand Persaud and Company, Rajendra Persaud whose company, earlier this rice year, struck a historic rice sales deal with Cuba, told Stabroek Business in an interview this week that optimizing returns from the rice sector requires significantly greater official attention to critical infrastructural and other support mechanisms associated with ensuring its growth and wellness. Persaud told this newspaper that while potentially lucrative rice markets exist in both Central America and Latin America current rice production levels are not adequate to position the country to take full advantage of them.
Asserting that Guyana needs to move decisively to extend lands under cultivation, Persaud also alluded to what he termed “the age-old problem of irrigation” that farmers faced. Every year farmers complain that they do not get water within a specific time frame for the ploughing and planting of paddy. There is need for a timetable for the distribution of water during that period.”