MINISTER of Agriculture, Noel Holder, last week disclosed that farmers who collectively owe the Mahaica Mahaicony Abary Agricultural Development Authority (MMA/ADA) over $500M  for drainage and irrigation and land rental charges,  have until the end of this year to pay up, failing which their leases will be rescinded and given to those  who are willing to pay.

The minister disclosed the deadline in a recent interview with the Guyana Chronicle, saying that the dominant motivation of those who were resisting paying their arrears and the new rates was “a toxic mix of greed and politics.”
He stressed: “This $500M they owe has to do with the old rates. They haven’t addressed this much less addressed the issue of the new rates.”

He added: “We are writing these delinquent farmers now. If they don’t pay up by the end of this year, we will do what the law says we must do.”
The minister’s comments came in the wake of recent statements  by  General Manager of the MMA/ADA, Aubrey Charles, who disclosed that as at July 2017,  payments by farmers amounted to  a mere  30% of the sums needed for the provision of D&I services .

Charles had warned that as such, the farmers should understand that the MMA  would  only be able to provide the level of service they require if they honour their obligations.
Commenting on the MMA/ADA situation, Minister Holder said that many of the defaulters were not even farming the land. “Many of them are landlords, which is illegal. They are not supposed to lease land from the Government and then sublet it. That is what many of them are doing.”

He said that some of those landlords have been renting to the big farmers at rates as high as $20,000 per acre. He said: “We want $15,000 per acre. Pay us. You will still clear.”
He stressed that a position taken by some   farmers that they did not have enough capital to purchase tractors, combines and other equipment was the reason that they were sub-letting their lands, was a poor argument.

He said one farmer with 10 acres may not be able to afford a tractor, but 10 farmers with 100 acres could easily afford a tractor. What they needed to do was to form co-ops or get into some arrangement whereby they could invest in a machinery pool, so they could look after their production and then hire out the equipment. He said that the MMA would take away the lands leased by those who would not pay and give them to the people who were sub-letting from them.

He stressed too that granting waivers of rates was out of the question.
“Some people have been paying. So you haven’t [been] paying for the last five years and I waive your rates. But this farmer has been paying.  I can’t penalise him when you have been getting off.  I will have to give him back his money. If the defaulters pay up the MMA/ADA does not need a subvention. With the new rates the MMA/ADA will make enough surpluses to do the Mahaicony /Abary phase of the project, as well as the Mahaica/Mahaicony section of this project.”

He said that it needed to be understood that Guyana was facing climate change.
“There is a coastland, it is six feet below sea level and 80% of the  population lives here. The coastland is threatened. We  have to take cognizance of this and what  we are doing is trying to improve our drainage by putting in more pumps, because  whereas in the past we  drained 12 hours a day through the sluices, because of rising sea levels, we can now  only drain for about  10 hours.

“So we are putting in more pumps, but when we do so it costs more money to drain and it doesn’t bring a cent more productivity to the nation for the extra money we [are]  putting in to maintain rice and  sugar production
He said that this made it very important for people to pay up to the MMA/ADA to support that extra climate change mitigation, as well as fund the two additional phases of the project.
Most of the farmers who are in default with their payments are those cultivating crops in the Abary/Berbice area.

The D&I rates for the Abary/Berbice rice cultivation was raised from a maximum of $2500 per acre to $8,000 per acre and the land rent charges have been increased from $1,000 per acre per year to $7,000 per acre per year for 2017.
This means an overall increase from $3500 per acre per year to $15,000 per acre per year.

The D&I charges for the Abary/Mahaicony area had been increased from $1241  to $7000 per acre per year and  in the Mahaicony/Mahaica area, from a situation where the farmers here had not been asked to pay for D&I charges, even though those services had been provided from zero to $5000 per acre per year.
Farmers have since been protesting against the increases, saying that they are too steep.