A ten-year plan, draft­ed in 2014 and es­ti­mat­ed to cost tax­pay­ers al­most half a bil­lion dol­lars to breathe new life in­to the strug­gling rice in­dus­try, has nev­er got off the ground.

The 81-page “T&T Rice In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment Plan 2014-2024,” draft­ed by tech­nocrats in the then Min­istry of Food Pro­duc­tion, fo­cused on ad­dress­ing food sov­er­eign­ty, di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my, and re­duc­ing the coun­try’s $5 bil­lion food im­port bill.

In light of the 2007-2008 rice price crises, the plan point­ed out that many gov­ern­ments placed greater em­pha­sis on pro­mot­ing self-suf­fi­cien­cy in rice, which we need to fo­cus on.

How­ev­er, the rec­om­men­da­tions were nev­er im­ple­ment­ed and eight years lat­er T&T still has to re­ly on oth­er coun­tries–main­ly Guyana, for our rice sup­plies.

The doc­u­ment stat­ed that T&T’s mode of rice pro­duc­tion was in­ef­fi­cient and in need of an over­haul for the re­al­i­sa­tion of rice yields and end prod­uct qual­i­ty on par with glob­al trends.

It al­so stat­ed that in terms of rice pro­duc­tion per hectare, T&T ranked the low­est amongst the ma­jor­i­ty of pro­duc­ers in the re­gion, bear­ing in mind that in 2011 T&T con­sumed 34,000 tonnes of rice at a cost of $121 mil­lion.

Of this fig­ure, 2,273 tonnes were lo­cal­ly pro­duced rice while the re­main­der was im­port­ed par­boiled rice from Guyana and South Amer­i­ca.

Fast track eight years lat­er, T&T’s rice pro­duc­tion has dwin­dled to a mere 585 tonnes and we are far from ob­tain­ing food se­cu­ri­ty in the sta­ple.

Up to 1995, the in­dus­try pro­duced at least 30 per cent of the coun­try’s rice sup­ply with a sur­plus to ex­port, which was sup­port­ed by a farm­ing pop­u­la­tion of 6,000.

To­day, the in­dus­try has less than a dozen farm­ers who pro­duce five per cent of the rice we con­sume. Many farm­ers are strug­gling to pay loans as the in­dus­try is fail­ing.

The plan cit­ed the re­moval of large-scale farm­ers from the Nar­i­va Swamp, the in­tro­duc­tion of a grad­ing sys­tem for rice, lack of cer­ti­fied seeds, poor ir­ri­ga­tion, in­ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture, no fi­nanc­ing and train­ing for farm­ers, the ab­sence of agron­o­mists, and no mean­ing­ful in­ter­ac­tion be­tween pro­duc­ers and buy­ers to im­prove the com­pet­i­tive­ness that led to the in­dus­try go­ing down­hill over the years.

While some of these mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed un­der the then food pro­duc­tion min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, there was no con­ti­nu­ity when he demit­ted of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to the plan, the new in­dus­try mod­el would con­sist of pub­lic/pri­vate agree­ments with a tar­get­ed ton­nage of fin­ished rice set at 17,000 tonnes per year which rep­re­sents “50 per cent of self-suf­fi­cien­cy based on av­er­age rice de­mand lev­els over the last five years at 34,000 tonnes per an­num.”

This ton­nage is equiv­a­lent to 10,000 acres of rice pad­dy pro­duc­tion.

Ar­eas pin­point­ed for rice pro­duc­tion were Plum Mi­tan, Fish­ing Pond, Oropouche, Nar­i­va, Navet, Ca­roni, Fe­lic­i­ty, and Cunu­pia.

The es­ti­mat­ed pro­ject­ed cost to de­vel­op the in­dus­try was placed at $477 mil­lion over the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2024.

“This cost omits price sup­port un­der the pro­posed pri­vate/pub­lic sec­tor mod­el. The pri­vate mill op­er­a­tors will pay farm­ers the world mar­ket price for rough pad­dy. Should the world mar­ket price fall be­low the cur­rent gov­ern­ment-guar­an­teed price, then the State will pay the dif­fer­ence so that farm­ers’ ben­e­fits are se­cured.” There was al­so a rec­om­men­da­tion to pri­va­tise the milling in­dus­try by invit­ing suit­able pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors, de­vel­op­ing a work­ing re­la­tion­ship with Guyana (a net ex­porter of rice) to help cham­pi­on T&T’s rice in­dus­try, and es­tab­lish­ing a rice unit to take the sec­tor for­ward.

Ac­cord­ing to the plan, the min­istry re­ceived ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est from po­ten­tial in­vestors and ne­go­ti­a­tions were un­der­way for the en­gage­ment in one of two ways.

The first is a pri­vate en­ti­ty to es­tab­lish a new mill with the ca­pac­i­ty to mill 18,000 tonnes per an­num. This mod­el is prin­ci­pled on open-mar­ket con­di­tions where­by any pri­vate en­ti­ty is free to op­er­ate a mill in this coun­try.

NFM has agreed to work to­geth­er with farm­ers

NFM’s CEO Ian Mitchell ad­mit­ted the state-owned com­pa­ny has to play an in­te­gral role in sup­port­ing lo­cal rice farm­ers who have a lot to of­fer in pro­vid­ing food se­cu­ri­ty at this crit­i­cal junc­ture.

 In Feb­ru­ary, Mitchell met with sev­er­al farm­ers to iron out their biggest con­cern–late pay­ments. The pro­longed de­lay in pay­ments re­sult­ed in scores of farm­ers fac­ing bank­rupt­cy af­ter be­ing un­able to ser­vice their loans and pay bills.

NFM pays the farm­ers $2.99 and $2.86 for grades one and two of pad­dy, re­spec­tive­ly.

Mitchell said the com­pa­ny came up with a process to ex­pe­dite pay­ments and as far as he was con­cerned the mat­ter has since been ad­dressed.

“Com­ing out of that, there has been some­what of an agree­ment to work to­geth­er, so NFM could play a more ac­tive role in sup­port­ing the rice farm­ers. We be­lieve they have a lot to of­fer in pro­vid­ing food se­cu­ri­ty. It is al­ways bet­ter if we can pro­duce stuff lo­cal­ly and re­duce the need for for­eign ex­change and food im­por­ta­tion.”

Mitchell, who joined NFM last year, said that once there was a re­ju­ve­na­tion of the in­dus­try, there would be op­por­tu­ni­ties for white and par­boiled rice.

“But we have not got­ten that far as yet. We are still try­ing to work out the me­chan­ics. The farm­ers have ex­pressed an in­ter­est in fur­ther­ing those dis­cus­sions. They need to be able to ar­tic­u­late what they need, and we are not nec­es­sar­i­ly the per­sons to pro­vide all of that sup­port. What­ev­er we can con­tribute, we will. The in­dus­try is way big­ger than just NFM.”

One ini­tia­tive the farm­ers praised Mitchell for was his un­der­tak­ing to try and ob­tain seeds from Guyana.

How­ev­er, Mitchell said, they moved a bit late in seek­ing to source the seeds, stat­ing that for the next crop they would have to put in their re­quest ear­ly.

In a 2019 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing, NFM ad­mit­ted that 95 per cent of lo­cal­ly grown rice ends up as in­put in­to an­i­mal feed while five per cent is used for hu­man con­sump­tion.

The com­mit­tee al­so heard that lo­cal rice pro­duc­tion had dropped from 21,000 met­ric tonnes in 1992 to 585 met­ric tonnes in 2018.

Asked if there were any plans by NFM to im­prove its rice pro­duc­tion, Mitchell said their dis­cus­sions had been fo­cused on se­cur­ing rice as an in­put to one of their process­es.

“The ex­pec­ta­tion is that once that goes well, and we start see­ing an in­crease in vol­umes, we are very much in­ter­est­ed in get­ting back to the point where there are oth­er op­tions to rice.”

Mitchell said there may be oth­er things NFM would have to look at as it re­lates to milling and pro­cess­ing, but they have not reached that point as yet.

Asked if NFM may have to re­fo­cus on the way the com­pa­ny op­er­ates, Mitchell said “it is like­ly. We can­not do it alone. It’s about where we see our­selves in the whole na­tion­al frame­work from the stand­point of be­ing able to pro­vide food for T&T.” As chal­leng­ing as it has been for NFM to im­port in­puts for its busi­ness, Mitchell said, the com­pa­ny has to be­come cre­ative and open-mind­ed in chart­ing its way for­ward.

“It is go­ing to be a chal­leng­ing pe­ri­od. It has been a chal­leng­ing pe­ri­od but we feel if we do what we have to, there is a way. We can get through this in a way that would work out for the peo­ple of T&T.”

Ho­sein to get re­sponse from his tech­ni­cal team

Guardian Me­dia What­sApped Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein a list of ques­tions re­gard­ing what mea­sures his min­istry in­tends to take to boost the dy­ing rice in­dus­try, woo farm­ers back to the land and wean T&T from im­port­ed rice.“I have re­ceived your re­quest and for­ward­ed it to the tech­ni­cal team for a re­sponse,” was Ho­sein’s re­sponse on Thurs­day.

Guardian Me­dia is still await­ing a re­sponse from the tech­ni­cal team.