–sector expected to grow by 70 per cent by 2025
WITH Guyana’s rice yield increasing rapidly, the industry is projected to grow by 79 per cent by the year 2025.
This was, on Wednesday, revealed by President, Dr. Irfaan Ali, during a press conference on Wednesday.
He said that the rice industry accounts for approximately 60 per cent of the country’s agricultural exports.

“We are working now on expanding our rice production. We had [a] record production of rice grains from 559,789 tonnes in 2021 to 625,092 tonnes so far, a 12 per cent increase,” the Head of State said.
Over the past four years the country has seen a five per cent increase in its yield.

“Rice yield has increased from 5.9 tonnes per hectare in 2019 to 6.2 metric tonnes per hectare in 2023; a five per cent growth. We are projecting rice production to grow by 79 per cent to one million metric tonnes in 2025,” Dr. Ali said.
While the government has been pushing for the diversification of the agriculture sector, rice remains the country’s leading agricultural exports, with statistics from 2020 to 2023 depicting production at 1.7 million metric tonnes, valued at US$743 million.
Back in November 2020, just months after assuming office, Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha launched a new high-yielding variety of rice, called GRDB16.

The variety of rice was marketed to have the potential to produce up to 60 bags per acre, which is equivalent to an average of nine tonnes per hectare.
At the launch, Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) Chief Scientist, Dr. Mahendra Persaud, said that with the new variety, Guyana’s rice production levels will increase tremendously.

He related that Guyana is part of a small group of rice producers, who could produce over six tonnes per hectare.
“I would like to see our productivity increasing constantly, hopefully achieving seven tonnes per hectare in the coming years. This candidate variety that we are launching today has demonstrated a good partnership between the researcher and the farmer, because without the farmers we couldn’t have achieved the type of results that we have today,” Dr. Persaud said.

He said that new varieties were needed in order to improve the production levels of the farmers. According to the scientist, there has been a 50 per cent increase in production — from four tonnes per hectare in 2005 to six tonnes per hectare in 2019 — at the farm level. This, Dr. Persaud said, illustrates that farmers and the research station have been working adequately.
For the past 15 years, GRDB has been releasing new varieties of rice to farmers, each demonstrating improved characteristics over the previous one. To date, GRDB has released nine varieties, each variety having higher yields than previously released ones.
And, according to information provided by the Ministry of Agriculture, trials are ongoing for a new bio fortified variety of rice.