Pariag Sukhai, tells the story of the rice industry in Guyana
My grandparents were indentured immigrants from India. They came to British Guiana in l902 and were “bounded” for five years to Leonora Estate.  They went to live in Anna Catherina when their contract expired in l907. In India my grandfather was a farmer, so when his term of indentureship expired he was allocated l ½ acres of land in Hague in lieu of his repatriation fee and he decided to farm this land.  He wanted to return to India but could not afford the travel costs for his family and he did not want to return to the sugar plantation, so farming provided the wherewithal to support his family.  However, it was only when he was on his deathbed that I realized how much this compromise hurt his soul, as it did those of most immigrants, because until his last breath he kept repeating “Mein Hindustan jaata hai”.  The immigrants were originally held captive by contract, then by compromise in a land they never considered their own.
My mother’s parents were also indentured immigrants who were assigned to Uitvlugt Estate.  After their period of indentureship was over, they went to Tiger Island on the Essequibo River, where they also began rice cultivation.  Growing up with parents and grandparents who cultivated rice I became a rice farmer as a natural consequence, helping in the fields after school and on weekends and holidays.
Secondary school education at that time was a privilege reserved for the elite and there were no secondary schools in the suburbs.  Although I wanted to continue my education my father was too poor to send me to Georgetown, so after I completed my primary education I began working at Leonora Sugar Estate, but continued farming in my spare time.
Farming is at all times very labour-intensive, but during those earlier years the processes involved were overwhelmingly laborious and time-consuming; so individual farming of necessity had to be done on a small scale – just enough for subsistence survival.  Before the establishment of mills farmers took their paddy to be de-husked by the hullers that had been installed in the sugar factories for the purpose of milling rice grown by slaves in plots of land allowed them for that purpose.

Runaway slaves first planted rice
Runaway slaves first planted rice in the backlands of Mahaicony, but their yields and fields were destroyed by the sugar barons as a deterrent to further revolt. However, the plantation owners recognized the feasibility of allowing a minimal amount of rice cultivation by the slaves for their personal consumption.
The immigrants did land-preparation with fork and hoe, while ploughing was an arduous, time-consuming feat done manually with a piece of wood into which spike nails were driven. There were no available pumps then, so entire fields had to be drained with buckets. Pre-germinated  seed paddy were sown in nurseries, or beeyaris, in order to produce seedlings, or beeyas, which were nurtured as a collective effort by several farmers before being transplanted in the various fields. Farmers and ther entire families, even children, worked from dawn to long after dusk every day of the week on their plots of land, merely to survive.

After harvesting their crops, the farmers separated the grains from the stalks by beating them against a wooden frame.  They then dried and stored their paddy in a storeroom called a bakhar, which was a square-shaped building with four mud walls and a troolie  (thatched) roof.  Bags of paddy were fetched on the head to the sugar factory to be milled as the need arose. Farmers had to queue up with their paddy bags on their heads for their turn to mill their rice.
The rice that my grandfather and parents planted was only sufficient for our household consumption.  We planted other crops as well in order to make ends meet.  Working in the sugar estate provided us with the other basic necessities.  Things like shoes were luxuries then that most people could not afford, even with all their long hours of backbreaking work.  Houses were made of wattle daubed with mud, with mud floors and roofs made of troolie leaves or dew-grass.
Farmers worked a rotation system in planting and harvesting each others’ crops because no single person, or family, could have managed.  Children had to skip school many days to help in the fields.  A few persons harvested enough to sell to local consumers, but there was no organized system to export rice.  Instead rice was being imported to satisfy local demands because this foodgrain was a staple for especially Indian and Chinese immigrants. I remember reading that in l886 the rice import bill stood at $l million, which would today equate to hundreds of millions of dollars. However, the industry of the Indian rice farmers soon eliminated the need for the importation of rice.  Instead Guyana subsequently became an exporter of the commodity.

This astronomical rice import bill forced the colonial administration to evaluate the viability of supporting the expansion of immigrant rice farming.  The potential for increasing the volume of rice production was measured against the preceding background and statutes and policies were consequently put in place, with the Commissioner of Lands being tasked with the responsibility of identifying and distributing land suitable for rice production, most of which were converted from former sugar estates that had been abandoned after the abolition of slavery.

Centenary celebrations held to commemorate the first batch of rice exported from Guyana
The British Guiana Rice Marketing Board was established and the first shipment of rice left British Guiana for the Caribbean in l908.  Nationwide centenary celebrations were held to commemorate this historic landmark in Guyana’s industrial history in 2008.
Farmers leased as much land as they could afford from the government and there were several merchants who would buy the best paddy from the farmers, mill it, and then sell the rice at highly-inflated prices to local consumers.  Many became wealthy and bought their own mills, charging farmers a fee for milling the paddy; but the record of some millers for using dubious methods to cheat farmers began since then.
Food shortages during the two world wars necessitated higher production targets because rice from British Guiana had to supply the entire Caribbean in order to help the war effort.  However, this increase in production did not translate into prosperity for farmers, because BG’s rice was sold at half the world market price.
This was a deliberate ploy by the colonial administration, because they needed to keep the farmers trapped in poverty as leverage to retain their labour force.  The farmers were forced to continue to work on the sugar plantations in order to earn enough to survive.  If rice farming had proven too lucrative then farmers would have been tempted to abandon the sugar industry and concentrate mainly on rice cultivation. The “massas” gave no major consideration to rice production because creating a parallel plantation-based industry would have been inimical to their own interests in the sugar industry.

Rice became major industry in Guyana
However, with grit and endurance, and the indomitable will and resilience that made them survive years of bonded servitude, the farmers prevailed.  Rice cultivation gradually but inexorably grew to become one of the primary products in this country – to the extent where the colonial government recognized its major potential for revenue-generation and formulated policies and statutes to control and enhance these potentials in efforts to optimize production in this rapidly-expanding industry.
The Rice Producers Association (RPA) was established by Act No. 7 of l946, which came into being on the l4th September of that year. The establishment of this Organization was a natural consequence of this new dynamic in the industrialization of British Guiana.  However, the system was a capitalist one and these organizations were structured to create more wealth for the wealthy merchants and millers, while most farmers continued to live at subsistence levels, albeit many had managed to acquire oxens, which reduced the manual labour and man-hours needed, enabling them to cultivate more acreage, thereby increasing production.
The industry boomed with the introduction of mechanization, although the old-fashioned methods still prevail in many areas. Combines were a boon to farmers but they inhibited the use of residual vegetation as fertilizer, because there was no cutting implement and the stalks entangled the threshers.
However, although production had increased in volume, farmers’ fortunes did not increase in accordance, because the system was stacked in favour of the millers and the merchants – the entrepreneurial elite.  The farmers took all the risks, did all the hard work, but the rewards did not devolve to them, despite their sustained efforts toward personal wealth-creation and to keep the industry viable.
They succeeded immeasureably in the latter, but personal prosperity continued to elude them because their profit potential was continually being eroded in various creative ways devised by some millers, or by the elements themselves, especially in this era of the climate change phenomenon.
The rice industry evolved initially by a collective community effort, which was institutionalized by Dr. Cheddi Jagan at Vergenoegen through a system that is still successfully operational until today.

Dr. Cheddi Jagan restructured RPA to be more representative of farmers’ needs
The RPA had ostensibly been established to represent the rights of farmers, but it served instead to promulgate the interests of the bureaucracy until l957, when the farming community rallied under the leadership of Dr. Cheddi Jagan and changed the status quo to reflect a more realistic and accurate imprimatur of the Organization’s mandate.

Since as a boy I had been concerned at the injustices inflicted on rice farmers, and even moreso on the sugar workers, so this dynamic movement advocating for workers’ rights provided me with a platform to join in a struggle that provided workers and farmers with a voice.
After Dr. Cheddi became President of the RPA the equation and orientation of the Organization has since been restructured to provide more forceful representation for the rights of the farming community.
We traveled from village to village across the country to access the farmers, even in the remotest areas, oftentimes at great risk.  One moonless night Hardat Ramnaraine and I nearly drowned in the Essequibo River while we were enroute to a hinterland rice-farming community,

RPA no longer a toothless poodle
The struggle was hard but we persevered against severe odds.  We picketed, we negotiated, we protested – in the streets, in Parliament.  We lobbied at national and international fora;  but the RPA gradually prevailed and over the years farmers have grown to recognize that the RPA is no longer the toothless poodle of yesteryear, but a champion for their cause.
This rich legacy of vigorous lobbying for the farming community continued when I left in l992. The late Fazal Ally continued the good work until his tragic demise in December l999; and now young but dynamic and indefatigable Seeraj – the current General-Secretary, whose vibrant efforts ensure that the tradition of committed service to the farming community continues.
The dividends are now coming to fruition because, after relentless representation by the RPA, the Government is currently taking steps to ensure that farmers reap the fruits of their labour and sacrifices.