Rice is not always nice

Nov 03, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – The Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) has developed a new variety of rice which can potentially yield as much as 60 bags of rice per acre. This may seem like exciting news but it is being blown out of proportion.
First of all, the 60 bags per acre is just the upper end of the yields which were obtained during the experimental trials of the variety. The highest yields obtained would have been 60 bags. The average yield would be about 48. At present the average yield is around 38 bags per acre.
It may appear enticing to a farmer to obtain an additional 10 bags per acre. But the fact that it is a new variety increases certain risks for farmers. For one, it is not sure just how marketable the new variety is going to be.
Most farmers are comfortable with what they know; they will be circumspect about moving towards a new variety which they do not know much about. It is not clear also as to how resistance the new variety is to pests and other diseases which attack rice. This past crop, some cultivations were affected by blast. As such, any transitioning to this new variety will take time. Some farmers will want to learn of the experience of other farmers before venturing to use the new variety.
Farmers will also be circumspect because of past experience. It is not the first time that farmers have been told of the development of a new variety which would increase their yields. They will therefore adopt a wait-and-see attitude.
The approach however is what is more important. There is a need to try to increase yields significantly. If this is done, the rice will be in better shape and farmers will be taking less risk. At present, one bad crop, only one bad crop, is all that it can take to ruin some farmers or to throw them into debt. And it does not take much to have a bad crop – bad weather, disease or flooding the rice lands when the rice is ready for harvesting. That is all it takes to bankrupt farmers.
If yields can increase by more than 40 per cent, this would be a major boost for the rice industry. It would help to increase farmer’s earnings and help many of them pay off their mounting debts. Secondly, it would mean that paddy production can be increased without having to find additional lands.
The availability of new lands is a problem. There are not much new lands which can be brought under cultivation. Rice requires access to drainage and irrigation, and these require huge infrastructural costs. It is going to be difficult for government to find the resources to establish new rice cultivation schemes.
One of the problems in the industry is economies of scale. There are far too many subsistence rice farmers, some planting as little as eight acres of lands. There is not much money to be made there, even if 60 bags are obtained. Small rice farmers need to be encouraged to move to large cultivations but many of them are leasing from landlords and therefore there is not much hope of this happening.
Another major problem is that former rice and coconut lands are being converted for other uses. In the Mahaica area, for example, agricultural lands are being converted for use into high-income housing schemes. This is totally unacceptable and is something which should be stopped.
There are infertile lands along the Soesdyke-Linden highway which is better suited for that sort of development. The scarce agricultural lands should be reserved for agriculture since the infrastructural requirements are costly and it is totally visionless for the government to be allowing prime agricultural lands to be converted to non-agricultural use.
The announcement of the development of high-yielding varieties is not likely to create a wave of excitement in the rice sector. The sector still has major problems, one of which is markets for additional production.
The loss of the Venezuelan market was a major catastrophe for the rice industry. And even though there is a new government in office, it is not likely that it will make any attempt to regain that market given the problems within the Venezuelan economy.
Rice production may have already peaked. And with limited lands available, there is not much hope that it can expand substantially in the future, even with the development of high-yielding varieties.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)