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Rain affects rice, cane harvesting

May 06, 2010 News

-farmers, regional officials urged to be proactive

Rains have affected harvesting of rice and sugarcane across the country prompting the Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud, to yesterday call for a proactive approach by stakeholders to ensure that no losses are possible.
According to figures available, farmers have only been able to harvest a miserly 60 per cent of the available acres that were planted.
Region Five (West Berbice) has an estimated 28,000 acres still to be harvested and Region Six (East Berbice), with 24,000 acres to be harvested, are the ones behind schedule.
To compound matters, the campaign by the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) to fight against the paddy bugs outbreak, is taking a beating because of the rains, agriculture officials disclosed yesterday.
So far, more than 63,000 hectares of rice has been sowed for this crop across the country with 36,000 hectares harvested.
The situation is a maddening one for farmers, GRDB officials yesterday said, especially with many farmers still shell-shocked from the effects of the El Nino conditions.
Now the rains are coming fast and heavy and the situation of not getting enough water a few weeks ago has been reversed with farmers not being able to harvest.
Contacted yesterday, Minister Persaud acknowledged that the situation is worrying but technical officials are working closely with GRDB, the Guyana Rice Producers’ Association and the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) to ease the situation.
“I am urging all the stakeholders—farmers, regional and local authorities including—to ensure that they work together on this. We will of course be monitoring the situation closely and working with them.”
Regarding sugar, the new state-of-the-art Skeldon factory is the one currently in operation.
Total production for the crop as of yesterday was just below 80,000 tonnes with approximately 40,000 tonnes of cane yet to be harvested.
This would have produced a further 3,000 tonnes sugar.  Skeldon is expected to finish its current crop by mid May.

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