The Guyana Rice Development Board’s (GRDB) help to farmers in their battle against the infestation of paddy bugs in Region Two and other areas helped tremendously in reducing the loss of rice.
This pronouncement was made by the head of the Essequibo Paddy Farmers Association, Naith Ram, on the GRDB weekly production – This Week in Agriculture – that was uploaded to the Board’s Facebook and YouTube pages on Thursday.
At the starting of this year’s first crop, farmers were faced with irrigation issues as well as a paddy bug infestation that threatened the crop mostly in Region Two.
“This crop that we are in was very (challenging) for us but the Government of the day made significant contributions in assisting farmers. To start with, the Government had expended over $40 million in assisting in terms of pumping water. Had it not been for the Government a lot of rice crops would have been lost in Region Two,” Ram said.
In terms of the paddy bug infestation, he said that the GRDB’s intervention helped tremendously and while the damage varied, only a few farmers recorded a high number of losses due to the bug.
“A very few farmers would’ve gotten that [high] percentage of damage and it fluctuated from 3% to 5% to 10% [of losses]. The GRDB played an important role in assisting farmers by helping them in getting their plots sprayed, providing chemicals and looking over the entire operation,” Ram explained.
He also noted that if the farming system and schedule were managed properly, then the paddy bug infestation would not be as prevalent as it is. He suggested that there is a need for a proper water schedule that would allow farmers to sow in blocks.
“Having [a water schedule] would help farmers to sow in blocks and as long [as] farmers sow in blocks based on the water schedule, the crop would come in together and farmers would be spraying together. If farmers do not sow in blocks, what would happen is that those plots that are sowed late the bugs would be there and multiply and those who would’ve sown earlier, those plots would be infested with the bugs,” Ram added.
There were also reports in the media that the paddy bug was targeting the GRDB’s 15 seeds, however, the head of the GRDB’s Research Unit at Burma, Dr Mahendra Persaud, said on the programme that all of the varieties of rice that are being sowed in Guyana are equally susceptible to paddy bug damage.
“…and I want to go a step further and say there is no variety even out of Guyana that is resistant to paddy bug damage or to the attack of paddy bug,” Persaud explained.
Paddy bugs normally attack the rice crop after the flowering stage and usually has a 20-day period where they can strike before harvesting. The bugs suck the “milk” out of the grains and would generally leave them black and completely damaged.
As a result, Persaud pointed out that it is very important for the fields to be monitored on a daily basis, and if it can be done twice per day, and followed by the appropriate spraying solutions that should be carefully administrated, the infestation would be contained.
He also noted that the paddy bug population has been very high in most areas and they see a constant migration from field to field. It was also noticed that they are migrating from the backlands into the cultivating crops, which now requires the farmers to equip themselves with the necessary workforce and appropriate chemicals.
“…because also what we have seen is that the chemicals we would have relied on did not work very well. We went to take a second string chemical and it didn’t work very well so you must have products that are very authentic and once you administer the product as per protocol you would have been able to manage the paddy bug to a good level which would not allow you to get along the prescribed damage for an A, B or C grade,” he added.
Head of the GRDB Nizam Hassan also pointed out that the high industry yield of 6 tonnes of paddy per hectare is also testament to the fact that the infestation was properly managed.
“As the crop progressed there was a major issue of paddy bugs which the board itself recognises that [the] paddy bug is a pest of economic significance and we have been working along with farmers and other stakeholders to address the issue. We have issued a number of advisories, we’ve held hundreds of demonstrations out in the fields with famers, we’ve done a lot of publications and infomercials and basically extending the education to the farmers to advise them how they can go about tending to this bug,” Hassan added.
