Paddy bug ravages Region Six rice crop

Apr 11, 2019 News

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-“Rice Board not doing anything”–Rambrich

Region Six, stretching just around 36,000km² is known for its vast rice fields and farmlands with thousands of persons within the ancient county depending directly or indirectly from it.
However, over the past few months, farmers have been battling an infestation of paddy bugs on their rice lands and crops. The bugs have damaged nearly 25% of crops across the region.
The alarming percentage has caused a flurry of questions among farmers as it relates to what is being done to quell the issue that seems to have gotten out of control.
Lekka Rambrich who sits on the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) and who is also a large scale rice farmer in the

region, told Kaieteur News that although the problem is serious “the board is not doing anything”.
He explained that on many occasions suggestions were made to the board to have aerial spraying of the lands done since himself and other farmers believe that it is a solution that will garner the results needed to fix the problem but those suggestions have fallen on deaf ears, he said.
According to Rambrich, it is harvesting season but the paddy bug infestation is ripping through the rice crops. “Let the board come up with something to solve the problem. The board is doing absolutely nothing.
“In fact, they have an entomologist who never comes up with solutions. They are being trained and paid to do a job; let them deliver,” he said.
Farmers are being told by the board to spray their rice crops but Rambrich argued, “A farmer knows to himself he has to spray his rice; we don’t need someone to tell us that. They have a worker attached to the board. He picks up data on the ground, routinely and relays the information to the entomologist. This has been going on for years but with no sense of urgency or anything and this issue is getting bigger and bigger.”
He said that while farmers continue to suffer and lose millions of dollars from the destructiveness of the paddy bug, “No-one came to meet with farmers, not even the Minister of Agriculture.”
Rambrich stated that the present situation requires “total aerial spraying” of the entire rice cultivation area.
This, he said, will eliminate “the bugs in the trenches, the dams, the fields, everything and this needs urgent attention.”
He explained that farmers, individually, are spraying their crops with pesticides but the paddy bugs are also on abandoned lands, trenches and dams, making it almost impossible to cover such a wide area of spraying by the farmers themselves.
“I sent my request for the aerial spraying to the board, yesterday, since there was a meeting because this is beyond control. We need urgent intervention. This has never happened to such an extent in Berbice.”
Rambrich is suggesting aerial spraying to be executed once every season coupled with the individual farmers continuing to spray.
According to him, when it was done in the past through Nand Persaud and Company Ltd, there was control over the problem but the present government, he said, “abandoned aerial spraying”.
The technique, he disclosed, was done over four years ago. Recently CEO of Nand Persaud and Company, Mohindra Persaud, had told the media in Berbice that he had developed an airstrip at an approximate cost of $25 M.
This was for the sole purpose of having aerial spraying done through the Number 36 Village location. However, his application for approval appears to be stuck at the Ministry responsible for such a move for the past three years, leaving that idea in limbo.
Minister of Agriculture, Noel Holder, over a year ago during a meeting with farmers in Black Bush Polder had considered having spraying done by agricultural drones, that idea also appears to be stuck in time with no major moves to implement.
Additionally, Rambrich told this publication that he and other farmers are of the opinion that the paddy bug issue escalated because of the “substandard chemicals being brought into the country”.
He mentioned that previously the chemicals used in pest control were brought in from neighbouring Suriname but that has since decreased because “the Pesticide and Toxic Chemical Control Board (PTCCB) has been putting a lot of pressure and we are not having that amount anymore coming from Suriname and so we are forced to buy the chemical coming in Guyana from other places and that is not really working”.
He added that the farmers are losing money, the government is losing and the board is losing “because when you get 20% of your crop loss you are losing money and 20% of our export is being cut as well because of losses.
So the government loses on taxes and the board loses on the export levy”. Rambrich also believes that a research programme should have been implemented to study the pest which may intern make a way for solutions, this he said has not been done since there was an invasion of the pink mealy bug.
A special programme was set up then to eliminate that pest problem. “I think it can be done with the paddy bug too,” he said.
According to him, there is currently no programme to deal with the paddy bug issue and farmers continue to suffer while they wait for solutions to be brought forward.

 

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