OWING to scholarships from the Government of India, many scientists at the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI) and the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) have been able to acquire knowledge that is being used to increase rice yields and improve other crops.

This was according to India’s High Commissioner to Guyana, Dr. K. J. Srinivasa, in a recent interview with the Guyana Chronicle.
Dr. Srinivasa said that most scientists have done their Masters and PhDs through fully paid scholarships from the Government of India.

“They have been able to contribute to increasing the rice yield which was below I think two tonnes per hectare; now it is almost eight tonnes per hectare,” he related.

Guyana’s rice industry has been performing exceptionally and this was evidenced by the period January to March 2022, when the industry raked in approximately US$37,022,500, an equivalent of more than G$7.7 billion in export earnings.

Those earnings were derived from the exportation of approximately 49,304 tonnes of rice and rice products during the first quarter of 2022.

Importantly, export revenues from rice are expected to grow even more, since many farmers across the country are still harvesting paddy from the year’s first rice crop, which commenced with countrywide sowing in November 2021.

At that time, the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) had projected a bumper harvest, with most of the rice-producing regions being on target with their sowing.
National sowing projections for the current crop were pegged at an overall target of 227,240 acres.

Last year, even with massive floods, the rice industry was still able to remain afloat, earning export revenues totalling G$42.2 billion, an equivalent of US$201 million, resulting from the exportation of approximately 434,535 tonnes of rice, paddy, and its by-products.

Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha, had previously said that ongoing developments in the rice industry signal an even wider space for industry growth in 2022.
“We now have close to about 42 countries where we are exporting rice and we are looking to improve on that,” Minister Mustapha had previously told the government’s Department of Public Information.

Although the May 2021 floods devastated thousands of households and destroyed hundreds of hectares of farmlands, the government’s $7.8 billion flood-relief programme was enough to enable the majority of affected rice farmers to return to their fields and resume production.

In January of this year, as part of the government’s landmark $552.9 billion budget, additional recovery mechanisms and measures were included, and these are expected to serve as a springboard for further advancement of Guyana’s rice industry.

For 2022 alone, the rice industry is projected to ‘cop’ earnings in the vicinity of US$288.6 million, an equivalent of more than G$60.3 billion.