GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

T&T once had a thriv­ing rice in­dus­try, but sev­er­al fac­tors led to the near death of the lo­cal cul­ti­va­tion of the sta­ple rang­ing from dis­as­ters such as floods to late pay­ments to farm­ers from Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) re­sult­ing in the in­abil­i­ty to pay their loans to the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank of T&T (ADB).

Al­so, a ten-year plan, draft­ed in 2014 and es­ti­mat­ed to cost tax­pay­ers al­most $500 mil­lion to breathe new life in­to the strug­gling rice in­dus­try, nev­er got prop­er­ly off the ground, farm­ers com­plained.

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

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

How­ev­er, eight years lat­er T&T still has to re­ly on Guyana for its rice.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions COM­TRADE data­base on in­ter­na­tion­al trade, T&T’s im­ports of rice from Guyana to­talled US$18.6 mil­lion dur­ing 2024.

Now, the new ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is on a mis­sion to re­sus­ci­tate the lo­cal rice sec­tor and strength­en na­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of cer­ti­fied, high-yield­ing, dis­ease-re­sis­tant rice seeds from Guyana.

The min­istry took de­liv­ery of the pad­dy rice in De­cem­ber 2024, stored it, and re­leased it to farm­ers in time for the 2025 rice-grow­ing sea­son. The de­liv­ery of the rice is part of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing be­tween the gov­ern­ments of T&T and Guyana, signed in 2022.

At the event which took place on May 20, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Ravi Rati­ram said this marked a key mile­stone in Phase I of the “re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion and mod­erni­sa­tion of the rice in­dus­try in T&T,” adding that un­der this ini­tia­tive, the min­istry suc­cess­ful­ly pro­cured 100 tonnes of high-qual­i­ty rice seed from Guyana for the 2025 rice grow­ing sea­son.

The seeds are ex­pect­ed to sup­port the com­mer­cial plant­i­ng of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 acres of land across the coun­try.

Lo­cal rice farm­ers have wel­comed the move by the new gov­ern­ment how­ev­er, they em­pha­sised that cer­tain el­e­ments must be put in place to en­sure the con­tin­ued vi­a­bil­i­ty of the sec­tor.

Rice farmer Richard Singh is al­so hope­ful that this would en­cour­age more peo­ple to be­come rice farm­ers giv­en the hand­ful re­main­ing.

There are on­ly 15 rice farm­ers re­main­ing in the coun­try, ac­cord­ing to those farm­ers..

T&T once had 6,000 rice farm­ers in the 90s, but pay­ment de­lays, cli­mate change, ris­ing fer­tilis­er prices, high cost of pro­duc­tion, low yields, un­avail­abil­i­ty of seeds, and lack of po­lit­i­cal will have led farm­ers to aban­don the crop, caus­ing a once vi­brant and vi­able sec­tor to crum­ble.

This was de­tailed in a 2019 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee hear­ing.

It was al­so heard that in 1992, the coun­try pro­duced 21,200 met­ric tonnes of rice, com­pared to the 585 met­ric tonnes har­vest­ed in 2018.

Pro­fes­sor Wayne Gan­pat, for­mer dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine sug­gest­ed that the im­por­ta­tion of rice seeds is not re­al­ly sus­tain­able, ad­vis­ing that T&T needs to get in­to rice seed pro­duc­tion along­side pad­dy pro­duc­tion.

“We need to sup­port that with qual­i­ty re­search from the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture so that we do the prop­er breed­ing and pro­duc­tion prac­tices, so that we al­ways get qual­i­ty rice. Pre­vi­ous­ly the rice that was pro­duced in Trinidad, peo­ple com­plained it was of low qual­i­ty, but we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty now to re­al­ly pro­duce qual­i­ty rice,” Gan­pat said, as he al­so laud­ed Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts for the sec­tor.

On whether there was suf­fi­cient land space, he rec­om­mend­ed farm­ers pro­duce rice us­ing the “dou­ble crop method.”

“Rice, when har­vest­ed can just be cut and it re­grows, so you get two crops be­fore you have to re­plant again. So, it’s a dou­ble crop. You get less in the sec­ond crop but if you man­age it well, you’ll get much more yield per acre than you would from, let’s say, sweet pota­to, which you have to pull it up,” Gan­pat ex­plained.

Farm­ers have al­so com­plained of about lack of suf­fi­cient wa­ter to keep the rice fields prop­er­ly ir­ri­gat­ed.

An­oth­er farmer told the Busi­ness Guardian that state util­i­ties like WASA made it oner­ous to ac­cess wa­ter as the com­pa­ny had “of­ten ac­cused farm­ers of steal­ing wa­ter.”

He said the util­i­ty ought to be more un­der­stand­ing to­wards the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

“When WASA comes and take our pumps we not on­ly lose out liveli­hood but our fam­i­lies al­so suf­fer be­cause we can­not feed them. This should not be a hard and fast rule,” the farmer added.

In 2019, WASA seized wa­ter pumps be­long­ing to Aranguez farm­ers, cit­ing they had not ap­plied for the ab­strac­tion li­cence to per­mit the san­i­tary use of wa­ter.

The mat­ter against the farm­ers was lat­er dropped.

How­ev­er, Gan­pat said there is tech­nol­o­gy for man­ag­ing wa­ter prop­er­ly as well as nu­tri­tion sup­plies.

Cli­mate change can af­fect pro­duc­tion

Agron­o­mist Mar­cus My­coo warned that once there are is­sues with rain­fall and the ex­tend­ed dry pe­ri­ods, which T&T ex­pe­ri­ences, this would neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the rice crop.

“Then WASA is con­trol­ling wa­ter now so once WASA holds back wa­ter, the farm­ers are in trou­ble.

“...While we think rice is a crop that re­quires wa­ter, there is such a case as hav­ing too much wa­ter as well, es­pe­cial­ly from the flow­er­ing time on­ward. The crop will be very sen­si­tive to ei­ther drought or ex­ces­sive rain­fall,” My­coo ex­plained.

Fur­ther, he said ex­treme heat is al­so an­oth­er neg­a­tive fac­tor.

“It’s some­where like in the ear­ly 20s, no more than 28, 30 de­grees Cel­sius. Once you start climb­ing above that, then the crop is be­ing af­fect­ed.

“ So, of course, when we have tem­per­a­tures at 31, 32, and 34 and 35...pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is very much im­pact­ed,”he said.

To mit­i­gate against these fac­tors, he rec­om­mend­ed there needs to be a greater con­trol over wa­ter for ir­ri­ga­tion by hav­ing it stored more ef­fi­cient­ly.

“Just like what you need for ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems in the dry sea­son, we need to store wa­ter bet­ter. Of course, we need to im­prove drainage. There’s catch­ment of wa­ter and drainage of ex­cess wa­ter, those are both re­lat­ed,” My­coo added.

On the brighter side, he said in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the rice re­search in­sti­tutes around the world are do­ing work to de­vel­op va­ri­eties to cope with the ex­tremes like drought and flood.

“There’s work be­ing done in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and that will be part of the work that has to be done to re­build the sec­tor, greater col­lab­o­ra­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al rice in­sti­tutes,” My­coo added.

This he said, would re­dound to greater trans­fer of knowl­edge and train­ing.