Much of Guyana’s rice production is by farmers with small holdings.  These farmers have no fallback resources to enable their survival and continued rice cultivation when their crops are destroyed through natural forces or payment for their paddy is delayed and/or withheld by recalcitrant rice millers who use the farmers’ money to re-capitalize their own businesses instead of paying the farmers on a timely basis, and with a fair assessment of their paddy grading status.               
Despite interventions by Government to bolster and sustain the rice industry, including twice revising the Rice Act to protect farmers and investing heavily in research, through NARI, in attempts to discover more hardy rice strains that could defy weather fluctuations and pests, constraints and variables determining the dynamics of rice cultivation, not least erratic weather patterns due to the effects of climate change and the cost of inputs, much of which is petroleum based and subject to market fluctuations of product, determine the viability and profitability of rice production – from crop to crop, with no guarantees of break-even, much less making a profit.
However, Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud has given the assurance that Government is pursuing every avenue to address the anomalies negatively affecting the rice industry, and one initiative is by instituting provisions to empower farmers with coping mechanisms to deal with the many extant and emerging challenges and to protect them from the adverse effects of impacts to the industry of a negative and/or destructive nature.
Minister Persaud gave this assurance to officials of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB), Guyana Rice Producers Association (RPA) and other stakeholders in the industry during a seminar last Tuesday at which he announced Guyana’s projected signing on to a Fairtrade agreement that could provide some amount of guarantees for their protection against threats from international markets.
The initiative was laudably developed by the Caribbean Rice Association TRADECOM through funding by the European Development Fund with the objective being assessing Guyana’s and Suriname’s suitability for Fairtrade labelling.
This would provide a protective mechanism for small-scale farmers, whom the Minister said are the ones who absorb the shocks stemming from price volatility.
Among the several benefits that would accrue to rice producers from Fairtrade certification are a minimum purchase price that would be payable to producers (which is normally a “farm gate” price determined by reference to local costs of production and what is required for a sustainable livelihood for producers) and a Fairtrade Premium paid on top of the purchase price, which is assigned to a Premium Committee and used for socio-economic benefits to the community.
According to the Minister, rice farmers incur input and labour costs at the beginning of each crop without any clear knowledge or awareness of what prices they would be receiving for their paddy at the end of the crop.  Fairtrade certification will ensure that farmers are less vulnerable to the volatility of international rice prices because the movement advocates the payment of a higher price to producers, as well as prices that meet social and environmental standards, which in effect is a guarantee that farmers get a fair price for their product.
As Minister Minister Persaud said “the label has so far brought better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for thousands of farmers in the coffee, tea, honey, banana and many other sectors in the developing world”, which would obviously be a welcomed development for Guyana’s farmers, who have suffered immeasurably because of price fluctuations on the international marketplace.
Government has created, maintained and sustained a multiplicity of initiatives to reduce poverty and enable Guyanese a better quality in their lives and lifestyles.  This latest Fairtrade initiative would be one more step toward securing the sustained profitability and viability of Guyana’s agriculture sector, with particular emphasis on the rice industry.