IT must have come as good news to our farmers that Mexico has started to buy paddy from Guyana. The opening of the Mexican market resulted from purposeful work by Agriculture Minister Noel Holder, Mexican Ambassador Ivan Roberto Sierra Mendel, the Guyana Rice Development Board and Guyanese millers and exporters, the latter showcasing our brands in Mexico earlier this year.

During October, 2015, whilst Minister Trotman and I were in Mexico for the Open Governance Summit, I disclosed that Venezuela had imposed a trade embargo against Guyana. That created a stir, and I proceeded to explain both the loss of Venezuela as a major rice market and the main source of our fuel supply on concessional terms under the Petro Caribe arrangement.

ENTRY POINT
Immediately after my speech, I had a brief exchange with the Mexican President, Enrique Pena Nieto, who directed that his Agriculture Minister, Jose Calzada, should meet with me. That was the entry point to the Mexican market, which had depended traditionally for import of an estimated one million tonnes of rice from the United States of America.

Upon my return, and over a sustained period, I was literally roasted by the Opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and its surrogate mouth-piece, Guyana Times, for announcing the prospects of Mexico buying our rice and paddy. They claimed with expert knowledge that it couldn’t happen, as Mexico would not divert its trade from the USA.
Instead of welcoming the Mexico initiative, the former Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, blamed the new coalition government for the loss of the Venezuelan market due to what he described as “belligerent” statements. That was a grievous, unpatriotic utterance, if ever there was one coming from the lips of a former senior government official.

RICE DEAL RENEWED?
During March, 2015, Dr. Ramsammy was in Venezuela ostensibly to renew the rice deal. He was quoted by Demerara Waves as saying that Venezuela would buy from Guyana close to 200,000 tonnes of paddy and rice in 2015. Mysteriously, he did not return to Guyana after that jaunt and a high government official explained that the Agriculture Minister had returned to the United States for medical treatment! It was never fully explained whether Dr. Ramsammy had in fact inked that new deal.

It has been our contention that the PPP regime knew that Venezuela would scuttle the rice deal, but it held up high hopes for farmers in the run-up to the 2015 elections, that it had signed a new contract with Venezuela, as farmers depended upon the lucrative trade. The PPP government could not do otherwise, as it knew that farmers were owed huge sums of money, which Dr. Ramsammy placed at $300 million (Stabroek News, May 10, 2015). It knew also that the Petro Caribe Fund was run down. So it clutched to the Petro Caribe deal as if it were a political life-jacket!

MARKET AVAILABLE
The Opposition propaganda broadsheet, Guyana Times, took pot-shots at me randomly and routinely, over the Mexican market. The PPP “rice expert”, Seeraj, after describing the Mexican rice market as the “brainchild of the PM”, told Parliament during the February 2016 budget debate that farmers were committing suicide, since their hopes of selling paddy and rice to Mexico had been dashed.

Again, during another debate in May this year, Seeraj, the General-Secretary of the Rice Producers Association (RPA) and former director of the Guyana Rice Development Board, laughed and mocked at me, when he asked: “Wha happen wid the Mexico market?”
I responded confidently: “The Mexican market is available to Guyana.” I explained that whilst discussions are still ongoing about the sale of rice to Mexico, millers were hopeful of selling paddy, even at a lower price than they had expected. And alluding to the collapse of the Venezuelan rice deal, I added: “Perhaps those who were busy putting their fingers in the cookie jar did not try to reach out their hands to other markets.”
It is now my turn for the last laugh.

VINDICATION OF HOPE
It came as a vindication of hope that Guyana could eventually buy into a quota of some 150,000 tonnes of paddy for export to Mexico, duty-free, in open competition with several other countries. The initial shipment from a 60,000-tonnes order has started and when completed, Guyanese farmers would benefit from an estimated G$3.8 billion in export earnings.

The livelihoods of our farmers are not a matter for political buffoonery, such as the Opposition PPP has been exhibiting. Though we may have close to 50 countries that are interested in our grains, the search for more markets that offer better prices for paddy and rice should be the sincere concern of all of us.
Our coalition Government has put both hands to the proverbial plough. In spite of unprecedented challenges that witnessed alternating drought and floods, our Government has responded positively to the needs of our farming communities. It has been clearing literally the mountains of mud that the previous regime had left behind to clog up the drainage system, and triggered all pumps at its command to drain floodwaters from cultivation areas.

FOOD SECURITY
Our Government has placed priority on securing food security in a green and clean economy. Rice farmers as well as all other producers are strategic allies in this national effort.
That is why a caring government has to balance judiciously the interest of rice farmers with the security of cattle farmers on the coast, and cassava as well as cash-crop producers in our hinterland, Amerindian communities. It cannot and should not whimsically or opportunistically position one set of farmers against the other, as the Opposition is trying to do on the Corentyne, by portraying the efforts to rescue cattle farmers from the flood tragedy in the Cookerite savannahs, as a reckless intervention to harm rice farmers.

While there is no easy fix for the problems that had haunted the rice and cattle industries in Berbice, and to ensure a lasting co-existence of their competing interests, cattle farmers deserve our compassionate assistance at this time of distress. They too will have the last laugh when they finally secure defined and safe pasturage for their animals, far removed from easy access to rice lands.