The unprecedented success of the rice industry continues with half

of cultivated rice lands reaped and more than half of the target achieved.
According to Agriculture Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy, approximately 50 percent of the more than 81,000 hectares of land under cultivation for the first crop of this year have been reaped.
He disclosed that from the land that has been reaped, more than 5.1 million bags of rice have been accumulated. He further related that at present the equivalent of more than 110,000 tonnes of rice have been reaped.
The minister stated that by the end of this first crop, it is expected that a production of more than 250,000 tonnes would be achieved, stressing that this would far exceed the target of 206,000 tonnes.
However, he noted that this increased production is posing new challenges to the industry.
He explained that farmers are having a problem because they are achieving yields that are beyond their expectations, and hence there’s the problem of finding enough trucks to transport their paddy to the mills.
He said further that once they do find trucks to go to the mills, drivers complain of having to wait in long lines to unload.
In addition, the minister noted that the mills do not have enough storage space for the paddy and the rice being produced.
“These are challenges that we’ve never had before and the great production has now created these and we will have to begin to address them,” he said.
He disclosed that he has instructed the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) to negotiate with the Tourism Ministry, which manages the Sophia Exhibition Centre, to allow the centre to be used temporarily to store paddy.
Moreover, Dr. Ramsammy related that they are trying to ship some of the rice out of the country early. So far for the year, approximately 40,000 tonnes of rice have been exported, with earnings in excess of US $25M.
With new successes it is expected will come new challenges and therefore those who manage the industry should be able to anticipate some of these challenges, if not all, and implement measures to cater for them.
Nonetheless, it is commendable that already some measures are being put in place to deal with these new challenges.
The trend of booming production also makes it imperative that new markets be pursued vigorously, because if our traditional foreign markets cannot take off our stocks of rice then the industry would be in a dilemma of having a large amount of unsold rice, bearing in mind that our local market absorbs a limited amount which is more or less fixed.
At the global market level the situation looks stable and our rice industry should look towards getting a share of that market.
According to an International Rice research Institute article written by Sam Mohantyy, for many Asian countries, including Vietnam, China, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, 2012 rice production is estimated to be at record levels. According to the United States Department of Agriculture(USDA), overall global rice production for 2012-13 is estimated to be around 465 million tonnes (milled equivalent), more or less the same as the record production of 2011-12. But, ending stocks for 2012-13 are projected to decline by three million tonnes (from 106 million tonnes in 2011-12 to 103 million tonnes in 2012-13) because of strong growth in rice consumption. In the past seven years, global rice consumption has increased by more than 50 million tons, with an average annual growth of nearly two per cent. This has restricted the accumulation of stocks at a faster pace despite good harvests in the past few years.
Global rice prices have been fairly stable in the past year after a run-up in the first half of 2011 in anticipation of the re-introduction of the Thai pledging scheme and a subsequent drop in the fourth quarter of 2011 after the re-entry of India into the non-basmati export market. The end results have been the emergence of India as the top rice exporter in 2012 and the dethroning of Thailand from the top rank for the first time in three decades.
Another new development in the past year has been the emergence of China as the second-largest importer behind Nigeria, with 2.6 million tonnes of imports.
However, a word of caution to our rice farmers is that they must not become complacent as a result of the current success of the rice industry, as they would know that the situation could change dramatically for the worse because of the unpredictable weather patterns and financial upheavals at the global level. Therefore, as they enjoy the current success, they must also put in place measures to cater for the “rainy days.”