The Rice Marketing Board (RMB) on which the Rice Producers Association (RPA), a statutory body created by the Rice Producers Association Act, had the majority of members, purchased rice from farmers and marketed it.

The RPA’s representatives on the RMB, being the majority, had the dominant say in the price given to farmers. This period saw the rapid expansion of rice production and the opening of new markets, including that of Cuba.

With the change or government in 1964 the fortunes of rice farmers declined dramatically.
The RPA was removed, first as a majority on the RMB, then completely.

The market in Cuba was abandoned and the price to farmers was reduced, making production, especially for the small farmers, unprofitable.
One of the first signs of things to come was the letting loose of police dogs on protesting rice farmers.

By 1980, rice production declined to about half its 1964 level. And by this time, rice farmers were mercilessly exploited by millers who arbitrarily gave them poor grades for good quality rice and engineered the scales so that the accurate weights would not be reflected. Years of protest went unheeded by the authorities.

The Hoyte Government privatized the industry by abolishing the RMB and removing the government’s role in marketing.

The Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) was established as the regulator. Since 1992 rice farmers and their organization, the RPA, once again has a major voice in the industry by its representation on the GRDB.

Also, regulations were enacted to address long outstanding problems.
Measures were established in relation to grading, weighing and selling of paddy so as to address the long outstanding concerns of farmers. While all their problems are not yet solved, government’s intervention by way of regulations have gone a long way in ensuring that farmers are satisfied that their interests are protected.

In recent years farmers were mercilessly exploited by millers who would purchase the paddy produced by farmers, mill it into rice and export it.

Millers in the past used farmers as bankers. They took paddy on credit and waited until they milled it, exported it and received payment from the export of the rice, before paying the farmers. Sometimes they never paid.

Sometimes the market price went down and they claimed that they couldn’t pay.
Sometimes they simply decided to rob the farmers. While most of these problems have been resolved, many still remain. No matter in which way it is packaged, the refusal or failure of millers or purchasers of paddy from farmers to pay them for whatever reason makes them guilty of gross exploitation.

Some action was finally taken. A series of regulations were enacted to protect farmers as I mentioned above. In connection with the payment for paddy supplied by the farmer to the miller, the Rice Factories (Amendment) Act 2007 provided that: (1) a sale of paddy must be evidenced in writing by a specified form; (2) interest shall be paid on late payments; (3) the miller’s debt must not at any given time exceed five percent of the miller’s gross turnover of the previous year unless certain conditions are satisfied. This amendment has gone a long way in reducing the incidence of millers’ excesses against farmers even though, as recent news suggests, they are still alive and thriving.

The growth of the rice industry over the past twenty years has been accompanied by the growth of rice milling capacity. During periods of downturn in the amount of paddy produced, millers compete for paddy and send out agents to acquire paddy for their mills.

This in turn has resulted in the development of ‘middleman’ services to rice millers. Some farmers are happy to sell their paddy to these middlemen not realizing that there is no protection against them except the normal court.

Some middlemen purchase as agents for the millers and thus the farmer obtains the legal protection available under the Rice Factories (Amendment) Act.

However, some middlemen are not agents of millers. They act on their own behalf as purchasers of padi. They then sell to millers at a profit, receive their money and then refuse to pay the farmers. Some farmers are encountering great difficulty in recovering their money.

There is a simple solution to problem which may well grow. It is to amend the appropriate legislation to provide that the middleman be licensed and is registered as an agent of whichever miller he/she sells paddy to.

Where he/she sells to several millers, he/she can be registered as agent for those millers and a mechanism of proportionality can be easily worked out to ensure that the farmers who purchase from farmers are protected. This situation should be watched closely and the government should be ready to take action at short notice if it becomes a problem.

The chronic non-payment of farmers, though a reducing problem, still has a debilitating effect on production in the industry. It also diverts attention from other important issues such as developing new varieties and increasing yields. (www.conversationtree.gy)