By the way, what happened to the Mexico rice market?

Even as the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) is teetering on the edge of an abyss, the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) is clueless in finding a way forward. In fact, they have clumsily made the crisis at GuySuCo worse. Now they have inexplicably turned to rice for an answer, even as they have caused a downward trajectory in the fortunes of the rice industry. It must have shocked many to find out that GuySuCo is proposing to cultivate rice at Wales. It seems like APNU/AFC is desperately throwing darts and looking to see if any would stick. It is ironic that APNU/AFC’s solution for sugar is rice, given that APNU/AFC has precipitated the most severe threats that rice has confronted in more than two decades.
Moses Nagamootoo has been conspicuously silent about the Mexico rice market for months now. In fact, he has shown an absolute disinterest in the rice industry. He and Ramjattan who presented themselves before the 2015 elections as the champion of rice farmers now have little or nothing to say to the rice farmers. They have betrayed these farmers, like they have betrayed the sugar workers. The Agriculture Minister Has not mentioned the Mexico rice market once in the last several months. It appears as if everyone, but the rice farmers and the rice millers, has forgotten about the Mexico rice market which APNU/AFC boasted would be a panacea for the rice industry.
After Nagamootoo returned from Mexico almost a year ago, he boasted that he had personally negotiated a new market for Guyana’s rice. He and APNU/AFC, reeling from the loss of the Venezuelan rice market, felt compelled to kerfuffle the Guyanese people and, particularly the farmers, by conning the people that they had secured a new and better market than Venezuela for Guyana’s high quality rice. They ignored the reality that the problem was never markets; there are many destinations that Guyana can export our rice to. The problem is finding markets that guarantee Guyana’s farmers the best prices. The Prime Minister triumphantly proclaimed last year that Mexico is an even better alternative than Venezuela.
Almost a year later, could Nagamootoo, the Agriculture Minister, the President, anyone say what happened to the Mexico rice market? Because we had negotiated a large high-priced market in Venezuela, the so-called ‘Jagdeo rice deal’, millers after 2009 voluntarily reduced their export to Europe, a good, reliable, but lower priced market. But as our production reached record levels after 2011, Guyana increased its rice export to Europe. With the loss of the high-priced Venezuelan market in 2015, we are forced to further increase our export to lower-priced European destinations, switching from high-priced to low-priced markets. APNU/AFC had promised that rice export to Mexico would have alleviated the problem.
Before the 2015 elections, APNU/AFC promised farmers they will increase prices from just above 00 per bag to 00 per bag of paddy. Once they got into power, the first thing they did was to recklessly lose the Venezuelan market, leading to an immediate fall in paddy price to under $,500 and even below 00 per bag. This has led to a significant reduction in acreage under cultivation and a reduction in rice production. We were supposed to have reached a record-breaking production of 700,000 tons in 2015. After a record-breaking production (365,000 tons) in the first crop in 2015, the second crop failed to meet its target. This year, we are unlikely to even reach 600,000 tons.
Significantly, thousands of acres of rice land are presently not being cultivated since the paddy price is often below cost of production. In addition, hundreds of farmers are still owed by millers for paddies they supplied almost a year ago. APNU/AFC has an obligation to ensure that farmers are able to utilise the rice land that is presently available. Yet without addressing the challenges that rice farmers face and in the absence of any credible plan for Wales, they have now decided to cultivate rice at Wales.
Astonishingly, it appears that APNU/AFC is turning to the failed policies and approaches of the old People’s National Congress, including party paramountcy. Those same policies brought Guyana to its knees with poverty rates by 1988 reaching between 66 per cent and 88 per cent; depending on whose statistics you believe, including the statistics of Clive Thomas, the present Chairman of GuySuCo. Once before, they thought that rice would be a good solution for GuySuCo. The rice mills and the rice fields are still standing idle at Blairmont to remind us that rice is not the answer to sugar. History has not taught APNU/AFC anything as they stir the pot with another toxic concoction of jingoism and chauvinism as an economic and social development platform. (Send comments to [email protected])