Rice farmers – actually, paddy farmers, since rice is a product of paddy – have just met Government officials to explain the challenges the industry’s facing. And not so incidentally, allowing the rest of us – who’re merely rice eaters – to get a peek backstage as to why production fell last year. While they generally complained about spare parts’ dealers arbitrarily raising their prices – wiping out whatever little profits they might’ve made – it brings home quite graphically that paddy production ain’t a farmer and his family planting stalks of rice by hand and reaping with the same extremity no mo’!! No siree Bob!! Paddy production’s now a VERY mechanised undertaking!!
Think about it! There are tractors needed to plough the fields several times, and then to “rake” it. Nowadays there aren’t enough folks to fertilise and spray the paddy plants manually, and drones gonna have to be used. Then there are the combines for reaping, and tractor-trailers for transporting the paddy to the mills. At each stage of the process, increased costs of machine parts reduce the ultimate profits of the farmers. Now, while the farmers are told that there’s a global supply-chain problem right now – the Government’s waiver of duties on transportation doesn’t seem to be passing on to the farmers by the dealers. The GRA needs to look into this. While we’re in a free market regime, we can’t allow the middlemen to reap all the benefits of the Government’s intervention.
But just as we heard about sugar production plummeting from the unseasonable rains – the same happened to paddy. While we think of paddy always growing out of water in the fields, at the time for reaping, those fields gotta be dry. Or else we have what farmers faced the last couple of crops – their combines couldn’t operate properly in the flooded fields, and quite a large quantity of paddy had to be left in the mud. And even the reaped paddy couldn’t be brought out to the mills, since the dams were impassable in many areas.
The Government responded to the farmers with the argument that there’s only so much they can do in a free market dispensation. They already doled out some fertilizers last year. All of that is right, of course, but since strategically it’s them who’ve committed to a goal of one million tons of rice to be exported annually, it’s up to them to ensure we don’t have a case of one step forward, two steps backwards.
The rice price just ain’t nice, but when that happens in the States – that bastion of neo-liberalism – with their rice and wheat, they support their farmers every which way to Sunday!! Our Government should do no less!!
It’s food security, baby!!
…Riots
There’s a big difference between peaceful protests and riots. And it’s the reason the former’s permitted – even encouraged – in a democratic polity, and the latter’s prohibited. And the difference is, of course, the destruction of property and attacks on persons during riots. While all freedoms – like protesting – must be guaranteed, those freedoms end at the end of the other person’s nose!! And that’s where riots take protests –violating the selves and properties of fellow citizens, and violating the laws of the land.
And if a Government – like the legally elected PPP – allows that to happen, then who knows where it’ll end!!? Overthrow of the said Government by force, that’s where!! To be replaced by a dictatorship or anarchy!! There are Opposition elements who’ve openly declared this as their goal – and we see it playing out in the streets. The mindset’s been created in a wide swathe of the populace that this is the way to go.
We don’t need flambeau to see in bright daylight!!
…Russia
It’s clear the die’s been cast in Europe: the West is gonna fight to the last Ukrainian!! When Russia invaded last February, most armchair analysts figured it’d be over in a jiffy. They didn’t factor in Ukrainian and Russian nationalisms!!
