The star performer in agriculture was clearly the rice industry in 2013, having scored a record-breaking production level, achieving the equivalent of more than 535,000 tonnes, a 27 percent increase over the 2012 figure of 423,000 tonnes.
Production per regions stands as follow: Region Two (99,062 metric tonnes [mt]); Region Three (56,360mt); Region Four (24,972mt); Region Five (207,509mt); and Region Six (147,652mt). Again Region Five is the highest producing region.
This was the first time ever that a Caribbean country recorded more than 500,000 tonnes of rice in a calendar year. This also made Guyana one of the larger producers of rice in the Americas.
More than 200,000 acres of land was under cultivation in 2013, making it also the first time, cultivation acreage exceeded 200,000. Yield overall was five tonnes per hectare (ha,) again, for the first time in Guyana’s history. In 2010, the yield was about four tonnes per ha and in the late 1980s and early 1990s, yield was between two and three tonnes per ha.
The success of the industry is an acknowledgment of the enthusiastic participation of the farmers of Guyana, both small and large. They persevered under difficult weather conditions, and learnt to work with climate change to successfully improve their yield and production. In 2013, farmers confronted the challenge of a drought and paddy bug infestation during the first crop and heavy rainfall in the second.
Farmers invested in improving the capacity in the industry by procuring more than 1000 tractors and 90 combines during the year. Millers continued their investment by building mills, and increasing drying and storage capacity for paddy. In 2013, the drying capacity across the country increased by 2269mt per day, while storage capacity increased by 27,678mt. Region Six, the region most deficient in storage capacity accounted for 16,965mt of this increase in storage, while significant investment were also made in Regions Two and Five.
Guyana’s rice export for 2013 amounted to about 395,000 tonnes. Approximately, 58 percent of the rice was exported to Venezuela with other significant buyers being Europe, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and other Caribbean countries.
The government’s support to the industry was strong in 2013. When farmers faced high prices for urea, an important commodity in their fertiliser regime for crop production, government invested approximately Gy$400 million to procure urea from Venezuela and, worked in collaboration with the Rice Producers Association (RPA), and made it available to the farmers at about Gy$5000 per bag.
As the first crop advanced, farmers were being charged between Gy$7000 and Gy$10,000 for a 48kg bag of urea. Such an intervention saved farmers more than Gy$300 million per crop.
In addition, government also made other inputs into the industry to provide support to farmers. These included, the supply of pronto to farmers to combat the high levels of paddy bug, VAT exemption to farmers for tractors and spares, and investment in drainage and irrigation infrastructure among others, the Government Information Agency (GINA) said.
