THE rice industry continues to do well with 22,399 tonnes of rice exported during the month of August, which bore a value of approximately US$13.4 million. In addition, thus far for the year, 196,234 tonnes have been exported, valued at about US$116 million.

This was disclosed by Agriculture Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy yesterday when he met with the media to give an update on developments within the agriculture sector
Meanwhile, Dr Ramsammy said rice farmers have welcomed the dry weather as they have either started reaping or are preparing to reap, except for a few farmers who had planted late and now need irrigation water.
He explained that an issue arises because the farmers who are reaping require the water in the irrigation canal to be kept low and if this water is raised it may flow into the rice fields causing problems for those farmers. On the other hand if the water is not raised so that it flows into the fields by gravity, then the only choice those farmers who planted late have is to pump water into the fields.
This will, however, cause them to incur an additional expense which some farmers are not ready to bear. Dr. Ramsammy said that if they do not release water into the irrigation canal some farmers would sometimes resort to breaking the dams.
Another major difficulty he said that farmers are facing is the deterioration of access dams. He is hopeful, however, that these dams can now be repaired since the weather has been favourable for quite some time.
He advised that there are some 1,400 miles of dams in Region 5 (Mahaica/Berbice) alone and work is currently ongoing to repair those. Dr. Ramsammy stated that the ministry has limited equipment and resources and therefore cannot repair all the dams at once. He said that they focus on the most important dams and try to get those repaired at first.
He noted that arrangements have been put in place for the repairs of those dams in Region 6 (East Berbice/Corentyne) and they are also doing so in Regions 2, 3 and 4.