THERE’S a school of thought out there that rice production is a private business and as such, any involvement of the government would be a usurpation of the private sector’s authority.
At least, that’s the opinion of one senior official in the agricultural sector.“Rice farmers think that they can do their transactions privately and then come to the government to ensure that the price they negotiated for is increased.… But no! That’s not the role of the government! Private enterprise is a private matter, and we respect that privacy,” he told the Guyana Chronicle just last week.
President David Granger himself said recently: “The administration does not want to have to bail out the rice industry; we don’t want to become a banker with overdrafts for rice exporters and millers.
“Our role is to establish a framework; to provide a level playing field, so that the industry can prosper. Our role is to ensure safety; to ensure respect for labour laws, and to assist in the promotion of market access for rice exporters.”
The correctness of these positions notwithstanding, there are many who are saying that government’s intervention in the rice industry is  absolutely necessary at this point in time, particularly to ensure the  survival of those rice farmers who own small acreages of land, but do not have the wherewithal to access capital or machinery to cultivate those lands.
GAIBANK DAYS

Up to the mid-90s, farmers planting less than 10 acres of rice lands were able to access financing  for cultivation through the now defunct Guyana Agricultural Development Bank (GAIBANK). They were  able to access machinery for land preparation and harvesting at concessionary rates by hiring government-owned tractors and harvesters. These provisions made small rice holdings possible.
During a recent lecture, distinguished Guyanese Professor in the field of Sociology  Dr Wazir Mohamed,  who hails from a rice-farming family, said of those days:
“My father planted 10 acres of rice. We did not have tractors or combines; we depended on government-owned tractors and government-owned combines. That is how we survived.”
Upon the previous administration’s assumption of office, however, GAIBANK was dissolved, and the equipment pool owned by various entities, including the Mahaica-Mahaicony-Abary Agricultural Development Authority (MMA/ADA), were eventually scrapped.
Professor Wazir noted that despite the expansion  of marketing opportunities in the 90s onwards, the disappearance of cheap and available financing and availability of machinery to small farmers had led to the haemorrhaging of small farmers out of the industry.
“An industry which was originally a small-farmer, subsistence-based economy has, since the 90s,  become a large farmer entity,” he said, adding:
“The number of small farming families with direct contact with the industry is dwindling; farm size has increased and is increasing as small farmers are evolving/being forced  out of the industry.”
FORCED OUT
He noted that as a result of the disappearance of financing and access to machinery, many farmers with small holdings have been forced to rent their rice lands to the highest bidder.
Those farmers  with access to capital and  machinery now occupy a commanding position in the rural areas.
The resultant situation is  most  pronounced in Region 3 (Essequibo-West Demerara); Region 4 (Demerara-Mahaica) Region 5 (Mahaica-Berbice); and Region 6 (East Berbice-Corentyne), where small farming is disappearing at an alarming rate.
Wazir said that there is a growing inequality gap in the rural areas as the process expands. This inequality gap, he said, is affecting both segments of the rural population, but it is more pronounced in some of the Afro-Guyanese communities, especially West Coast Berbice villages.
Said he: “The  government and the private sector have to be involved in partnership with farmers. There must be duty-free fertilisers to farmers; duty-free inputs; duty-free spare parts. There must be some kind of investment bank.
“If we want to protect the small rice-farming culture, there has to be some kind of machinery pool where the man who has a small acreage can get his field ploughed ; we have to have government intervention. Government needs to enable the evolution of a level playing field between small and large farmers.”
He said that one of the reasons the Europeans  have used to justify the granting of subsidies to small farmers, was preservation of the rural culture.
He posited that a short-term solutions to the problems of the industry should focus on  strategies to find immediate markets.
The long-term strategy should seek to  create  sustainable growth that ensures not only the preservation of the industry but  the preservation of a rural rice culture and the  fullest possible  involvement of small farmers  in the industry.

By Clifford Stanley