-GRBD says 60% is high yielding paddy

THE rice sector is off to a good start as some 80,792 hectares or 199,556 acres of paddy have already been sown.

General Manager of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB), Nizam Hassan, said 60 per cent of what was sown is high yielding paddy.

“Forty per cent is GRDB 10 and twenty per cent is GRDB 15…the other forty per cent is also good variety,” said Hassan during an exclusive interview on Thursday, January 17, 2019.
Over the years GRDB has been working to improve the variety of paddy which is provided to farmers.

Hassan said he has personally started inspections of farms in order to ascertain and get a better understanding of how the crops are growing.
According to the general manager, farmers in most areas have been able to sow their paddy without any hindrance.

“The weather has been favourable for the crops,” said Hassan, adding that in some areas farmers are having some slight difficulties accessing water.

Hassan was, however, optimistic about the outcome of the crop, noting that the projected yield is 5.9 tonnes per hectare. The projection is an improvement from 2017 which was 5.6 tonnes per hectare and a projected 5.8 tonnes in 2018.

The total projected target for this year is almost one million tonnes of paddy, with 522,255 tonnes being the target for the first crop.

“When we look at the figures compared to the first half of 2017, we saw first that the total volume that has been exported is 290,000 tonnes which is 43 per cent more than the 203,000 tonnes that was exported during the first half of 2017,” Hassan had said. The increase had earned the country GYD$23.2Billion (US$111Million) last year against the value of the export for the first half of 2017 which was GYD$16.1Billion (US$77Million).

In a report last year, the general manager attributed the increase to the determination of rice producers and millers to meet production targets and more so Guyana’s access to new markets, particularly in Latin America. “We’ve seen some significant increases in some of the blocs, for example, exports to Latin America jumped by 215 per cent. In the first half of 2017, we did 64,000 tonnes as against 202,000+ tonnes in the first half of 2018.”