Region 2 farmers in uproar over falling rice price, spoilt paddy

Sep 18, 2025 News

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─ demand visit from President Ali, Agri Minister

Kaieteur News – Farmers in Essequibo, Region Two on Wednesday held a massive protest in Anna Regina over the prices being offered for their paddy and the huge amount that has been left to spoil on their hands.

Kaieteur News received reports of the protest on Wednesday morning and made contact with some of the farmers to understand their frustration.

In a telephone interview with Mr. Nazeer (only name given), he told this publication that the protest was organised to seek reprieve, as a lot of crops have spoiled in the fields and farmers are losing millions.

“The government side of things are mum. They ain’t have any active solutions in place, even though they know that’s the problem with the system. It’s taking four days to offload the paddy trucks from the trailer to the mill and it’s spoiling in the tractors because it can’t get discharge,” he lamented.

A rice farmer himself, Nazeer said that the demonstration will be held another day as they remain hopeful for a solution. He informed the Kaieteur News that he contacted Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha but, “he turned off the phone, let me send you the video.”

In the video, he provided, there was a call placed to a number saved as “Minister of Agri”, due background noise, Kaieteur News could not hear what was said before the call ended.

The farmer is hoping that the government will intervene, and suggested that the administration rents some of the unused mills on the Essequibo Coast and purchase paddy through them.

“So, it get a lot of mill that not working and they are offering their facilities to rent, but the government so far has refused to rent the facilities,” he added.

In one of the videos seen by this publication, a farmer bitterly complained that, “The price for one bag of paddy cannot pay a farmer, $2300. The expense to produce a bag of paddy is approximately about $3000. The mill them making the money, because the miller is buying a bag of paddy for $2300, and sell the rice for $2500 for a small 10kg bag, which is not fair. So why you feel all these people deh out here today, all body ah farmer nobody hay nah contractor. If thing were going right, you feel anybody would have been here? No.”

Another farmer in a separate video said that, “If we ain’t get a good price, we paddy can’t sell. We pay extra price and cost for the drugs we spray. You could have get $2000 for a small bottle of thing now it’s $3200.”

A third farmer lamented, “Right now, we deh out hay concerning this paddy price, and we need a better price for this paddy, so we calling on the president and the Honourable Agricultural Minister to come and visit us to tell us something concerning this paddy price. Yeah, as you could see, a lot of people is out there. They are not comfortable, so please come and visit us.”

Region Two now joins famers in Region Five in cries against the extremely low paddy prices being offered. Farmers in Region Five are already clamoring at the shockingly low prices being offered by millers for this crop, contending that if there is not an increase, they will be unable to repay their loans, pay the rent on their lands and pay workers.

This publication received reports that some millers are now offering a mere $2,800 per bag of paddy, $1200 less than what they received last crop, when the $400 government subsidy was added.

Carlos Carbo, General Manager of SAJ Rice Group in Burma Road Mahaicony, explained that the price being offered for paddy is in accordance with international market price. He said over the last two years, rice price has been on the decline.

“So, this is a commodity, and it depends on how the world market and the world prices are. The world price dropped in 45 per cent, and so it goes according with that, because if it doesn’t drop, we cannot sell…The mill has to buy from the farmers, and the mill has to export it. And when we export, we compete with the international price,” he said.

Roopnarine Etwaroo, a rice farmer from Mahaicony told this publication that in Region Five, millers are offering $2800 per bag of paddy, which is a big fall compared to the $4000 they enjoyed last crop.

“So currently, the price is set at $2800 which is like a break-even point, or even under a break-even point, because last time, our yield was higher because we hadn’t much incidence of like gandi (paddy bug) and so on. Right now, at least about 80-90 per cent of the farmers are being affected by bugs which has affected the yield overall,” he said.

Speaking on behalf of the farmers in his area, Etwaroo said the lower yields as well as the lower prices, will cause farmers to leave.

He explained that at $2800, by the time farmers offset their expenses, like fertiliser, labour, harvesting and transportation and the reparation for seed paddy, they may fall into debt, as everyone has raised the prices for their services, but paddy prices ran in the opposite direction.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, at a press conference held at the Office of the President, President Ali said that this crop is yet another exciting one, however “the international market and international prices is not as exciting as the production itself. So, I wanted to give some amount of information on what is happening in relation to the global market. Now, when you look at the rice production globally, is it an all-time high, with major producers, exporters such as India, Vietnam and Brazil, having record levels of production, not only record levels of production, but record level of stockpile.”

He explained that this glut in the market is as a consequence of it being flooded hence the low prices. The weighted average per ton of white rice is $450 this is according to export quotas at the end of August. This is a $14 reduction from a month ago and a $228 from a year ago.

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• Farmers, Region 2, rice, Rice farmers, rice price, spoilt paddy

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