FARMERS will soon be able to make a better judgment of the soil, now that local rice company, Nand Persaud and Company Limited has invested $40M in the University of Guyana (UG) to have a soil testing facility built at Tain Campus, Berbice.

The Company’s Managing Director, Ragindra Persaud, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the University of Guyana (UG) at the 10th session of Turkeyen and Tain talks at the Pegasus Hotel on Thursday evening.

Studies have proven that the practice and use of soil testing has become widely accepted in agribusiness, both by farmers and industry internationally, and Guyana will not be left out, said Persaud during his address to the Pegasus gathering.
The facility is expected to give farmers from across the country the opportunity to understand what the soil needs in order to know what fertilisers to use and increase their yield.

Persaud believes the cost of production will also be reduced because farmers will know exactly what to apply and to what amount.
According to research, soil test reports generally provide farmers with appropriate fertiliser such as application recommendations for nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and limestone.
Soil testing also allows for determining the micronutrient requirements of crop. It is a farm management tool with a potential benefit to the farmer, mainly increased yields, reduced operating costs and superior environmental risk management.

“We are in rice and we decided to take on this project because we think that farmers are doing things and they are not doing it scientifically,” said the managing director of Nand Persaud and Company Limited.

He said farmers should be looking in the direction of reducing costs, especially in the rice industry, because the demand for rice has increased and will continue to rise in the future.
Persaud made reference to the recent Cuban and Mexican rice deals with Guyana and pointed out that those two countries import some one million tonnes of rice annually.

Guyana, however, lacks the ability to fully supply those markets because it exports only an average of 500,000 tonnes of rice annually.

UG Vice Chancellor, Professor Ivelaw Griffith, was in full support of the businessman but called on more corporate and international organisations to partner with the university to initiate similar programmes.