Region 6 to cultivate over 60,000 acres of rice this crop

…as hundreds of acres still to be harvested in Black Bush Polder

Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) is expected to cultivate more than 60,000 acres of land with rice for the end crop, according to Regional Chairman David Armogan, who stated that even though some farmers are well into the end crop, others are still harvesting the first crop.
Just under 50 percent of farmers in the Black Bush Polder community have already sowed for the second crop. The Chairman, who was addressing the Regional Democratic Council recently, expressed surprise that some 300 plots of rice were at that time still to be harvested in the Black Bush Polder community. He said he was under the impression that the entire crop had already been harvested by now, but he understands that some farmers went into the crop very late.
However, there are some concerns over those farmers who have not completed their harvesting but still wish to go into the next crop. The window for sowing has already expired, and, like the first crop, some farmers went into the crop very late, and now are forced to harvest during the rainy season.
Armogan says this crop is expected to be hitting records in terms of the amount of land which is likely to be under cultivation.
“Based on the projection by the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB), in the Black Bush Polder area, we expect to have about 21,000 acres, and in the other areas in the Region, another 40,000 acres, which will give us about 61,000 acres. This is a projection; I don’t know if we are going to meet that. The GRBD is also projecting about 37 bags per acre,” Armogan said.
The Guyana Rice Development Board bases its ‘bags per acre’ on the variety of rice that farmers are planting. The Chairman noted that at all of the GRDB outlets, seed paddy is available for farmers.
“In almost every area which is under rice cultivation, people are requesting machines, and we don’t have an adequate number of machines to facilitate the number of requests that we are having. So, some people will have to wait while others are being attended to,” the Chairman told the RDC.
Meanwhile, the distribution of flood relief grant cheques to rice farmers in the Region continues.