Guyana exported 401,000 tonnes of rice last year of which 305,000 tonnes was sold to Venezuela, raking in some US$176 million. The export quantity also surpassed figures of previous years, Guyana Rice Producers Association (GRPA) General Secretary, Dharamkumar Seeraj told this newspaper in an interview on January 23. He said 2011 was a very good year for the sector.
Dharamkumar Seeraj
“2011 has been a good year for rice; 2010 was a record year where we produced over 362,000 tonnes of rice; 2009 we produced 358,000 tonnes which was a record-that record didn’t last long. Last year, for the first time, the sector produced just over 401,000 tonnes.” According to the RPA general secretary, the production rate was achievable despite tremendous difficulties faced by farmers and the sector as a whole. Weather, drainage and irrigation and the farmer’s resistance to technology were amongst some of the challenges of the sector.
“It was a good year despite the challenges that we faced. And there were many of them, but I think our investment over the last decade in intensive extension work, extensive research work and most importantly that connection between that rice research section between our scientists and the farmers to enhance both productivity and quality in the rice sector which resulted in the record.” Seeraj noted that though the conservative nature of farmers proved a challenge, this was soon overcome as the GRPA took new methods of farming and technology to the farmers.
“With the farmers feed school, they sometimes go overboard with their contributions.
It is a very efficient vehicle to transfer technology to the farmers themselves using farmer’s experience. And doing an analysis of productivity and quality in the different areas, we have observed a pattern where we have the more successful farmers’ feed school activities in those areas, we also observe a more rapid improvement in terms of productivity and quality.” “That is a good selling point for the farmers themselves, we have managed to overcome that challenge by and large, by getting farmers to be a part of research and extension. As a matter of fact, they are now leading and our scientists at the research station are feeling a little threatened by the newly acquired investigation skills by the farmers-they now have much enthusiasm in wanting to try new things and trying many new things at the same time,” Seeraj told Guyana Times . That aside, Seeraj said weather conditions did play a major role in how things were done in the sector, while noting that drainage and irrigation is the single most important factor in Guyana when it comes to farming. He said most of the rice producing areas are below sea level, therefore depending on a proper functioning drainage and irrigation system.
“… so immediately, that tells you that drainage is crucial, especially when we do irrigated rice. Once we get drainage and irrigation proper, well then the other things tend to fall in place.
That is a continuous challenge that the sector faces; to have an efficient drainage and irrigation network, complemented by access dams.” The general secretary said currently, the drainage and irrigation network ” is in a fairly reasonable state”, while noting that there are pocket areas that pose challenges.
“For both seasons, we were faced with problems with the farm to market roads themselves, because of the weather… 99.5 percent of all the access dams are what we call fair weather roads, they are merely earthen dams which go bad quickly in periods of rain and we have had erratic behaviour of the weather… we got heavy rainfall in August which traditionally use to be our driest month, and not traditionally in May/ June.” “We are faced with harvesting in a period which is supposed to traditionally be our dry season, it has a heavy cost on the infrastructure and transportation.
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