With predictions emanating from the global Analytics company, GRO Analytics Intelligence, regarding a likely sharp reduction in rice production in 2022/2023 (a projection with which the United States Department of Agriculture concurs), it would be instructive to attempt to assess the implications of this pronouncement for Guyana, the foremost rice grower in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
GRO’s recent Intelligence Report made no mention of Guyana in its projection on the state of the global rice industry in the period ahead, its primary focus targeting some of the ‘heavy hitters’ in the sector, including India and China, never mind the fact that the fortunes of Guyana’s rice industry have an important bearing on the food security bona fides of other Caribbean territories. The causes of the projected underperformance of the global rice sector, according to GRO Analytics, range from “weather events in the rice-growing heartlands of Asia to crop diseases and consequential damaged harvests in other parts of the world.” The predicted production decline, GRO is quoted as saying, is hinged to “a reversal following consecutive years of increased rice harvests worldwide.” The GRO report also asserted that it was the previous plentiful supplies forthcoming from global rice giants like India, which, for the most part, had “helped to forestall even worse food security crises in those parts of the world that had been gripped by sustained famine.”
Here in the Caribbean, interestingly, the GRO disclosure of what it sees as an impending rice supply crisis coincided roughly with an announcement that some of the smaller territories in the region were facing a food security crisis. Coincidentally, the Stabroek Business’ own visit, just over a week ago, to a section of the country’s rice-growing heartland in Region Six, saw rice farmers there expressing concerns of a likely local rice shortage which one of the country’s leading rice millers told this newspaper could impact negatively on supplies to overseas markets, though he added local supplies are unlikely to be threatened. A seemingly lesser severity of challenge facing the rice industry in Guyana, however, does not mean that the sector is not facing its own ‘demons’ that might grow worse in the period ahead. The Stabroek Business’ visit to Region Six last week, arising out of which reports were published in its Friday January 20 issue, found farmers there brooding over the impact which the inclement weather was having on the access dams to the rice lands which had meant that harvesting in some areas had been halted altogether. At the same time, some of the farmers were complaining over a Rice Blast attack that had affected the current crop. The anticipated global shrinkage in rice production over the 2023/2024 period is expected to derive mostly from bad harvests associated, in large measure, with crop diseases. Favourable crops in previous years had also helped to stabilize global rice prices, according to the GRO report, though it added that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had forced prices upward, a development which global food supply analysts are now contending, was likely to create a knock-on effect on food prices and food security in the wider world.
With the Caribbean pushed to hasten the creation of its planned regional Food Security Terminal along with its pledge to significantly reduce extra regional food imports over the next three years, the issue of regional rice supplies could arise at the various food security fora likely to be held in the region over the next year, including at the February Barbados Agro Fest. The outcomes of those deliberations may trigger immediate-term reassessments of the overall food security situation of the Caribbean in the period ahead.
