SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

There are on­ly 15 rice farm­ers re­main­ing in the coun­try. 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 and caus­ing a once vi­brant and vi­able sec­tor to crum­ble.

In 1992, the coun­try pro­duced 21,200 met­ric tonnes of rice, com­pared to the 585 met­ric tonnes har­vest­ed in 2018. This fig­ure was pro­vid­ed by Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) in a 2019 Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee hear­ing.

To­day, rice pro­duc­tion has reached its low­est in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, with 15 farm­ers strug­gling to re­sus­ci­tate the in­dus­try.

T&T has now be­come high­ly de­pen­dent on rice im­ports from Guyana, USA, Suri­name and In­dia. In 2022, T&T im­port­ed 37,000 tonnes of rice, cost­ing $177.1 mil­lion.

Two weeks ago, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that the largest In­di­an-based agri­cul­tur­al com­pa­ny, Haryana State Co­op­er­a­tive Sup­ply and Mar­ket­ing Fed­er­a­tion Ltd (HAFED), is con­sid­er­ing es­tab­lish­ing a rice mill in our coun­try af­ter meet­ing with pri­vate and pub­lic en­ti­ties in T&T.

But for rice farmer Fazal Akaloo, one ques­tion came to mind: “Where will HAFED get rice to mill, giv­en our sig­nif­i­cant drop in pro­duc­tion? If you look at the facts, we don’t have an in­dus­try for an in­vestor to put down a mill here.”

Akaloo feels HAFED may have a “hid­den agen­da” in set­ting up the mill. How­ev­er, the Sun­day Guardian was told that HAFED may part­ner with state-owned NFM.

“What HAFED may do is in­vest and up­grade NFM’s 35-year-old mill in Carlsen Field to pro­duce par­boiled rice, which is what 80 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion con­sumes,” a well-placed gov­ern­ment source said.

The mill cur­rent­ly process­es white rice.

“This is one way we can re­duce our rice im­ports, ramp up pro­duc­tion, and bring a wider cadre of farm­ers on board, which we need,” the source added.

What Akaloo al­so found strange was that six months af­ter in­form­ing the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture that farm­ers need­ed a price in­crease in the sta­ple, giv­en the grow­ing cost of pro­duc­tion and land prepa­ra­tion, the Gov­ern­ment broke the news about HAFED.

How the rice busi­ness works

NFM buys the farm­ers’ rice at a guar­an­teed price. Farm­ers are paid $2.99 a kilo­gramme for grade one pad­dy. Grades two and three fetch $2.86 and $1.86 per kilo­gramme.

In the pro­posed price in­crease, the farm­ers asked NFM for $2.45 per pound for grade one rice, but NFM of­fered $1.59. For grade two rice, the farm­ers re­quest­ed $2.25 a pound, but an of­fer of $1.47 was put on the ta­ble. High­er pay­ments, Akaloo said, would woo farm­ers back to the land.

Last year, Akaloo said, on­ly five farm­ers were in­ter­est­ed in rice cul­ti­va­tion, but when the min­istry in­ject­ed $5 mil­lion to kick-start the in­dus­try, the fig­ure grew to 15.

In 2014, farm­ers cul­ti­vat­ed 3,000 acres. But in 2022, rice pro­duc­tion dropped to 80 acres. Last year, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,200 acres of rice were grown. Five con­tain­ers of seeds im­port­ed from Guyana cost­ing $350,000 were pro­vid­ed free to the farm­ers by the Gov­ern­ment.

A larg­er ship­ment of seeds is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Sep­tem­ber. The farm­ers are al­so pro­vid­ed with as­sis­tance in har­vest­ing, ir­ri­ga­tion and drainage. In a few weeks, the farm­ers will have ac­cess to two rice har­vesters pur­chased by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture from Chi­na.

While it’s a start, Akaloo hopes the farm­ers get a high­er price for their rice in the 2025 bud­get.

“One thing farm­ers have been lack­ing is fi­nance to grow their crops,” Akaloo said.

“The new rates will give us the push we need. Farm­ers were left with no in­come and loans with high in­ter­est be­cause of the State.”

The new price struc­ture was put on the ta­ble when Akaloo ven­tured in­to cul­ti­vat­ing 100 acres of eco-friend­ly rice in Ca­roni which will be har­vest­ed in No­vem­ber. “It’s my first at­tempt,” he said.

Oth­er farm­ers have al­so come on board us­ing less harm­ful chem­i­cals to min­imise en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts.

“We are grow­ing a lit­tle more than 500 acres.”

Their tar­get is to cul­ti­vate 2,500 acres. Un­der the guid­ance of agron­o­mist Mar­cus My­coo, farm­ers are al­so be­ing trained in man­age­ment, tech­nol­o­gy, high­er yields, and cli­mate change.

BOX

Farmer’s chal­lenges

Eni­at Ho­sein is one of the thou­sands of farm­ers who aban­doned his rice fields. “It still hurts my heart. Grow­ing rice is all that I know,” Ho­sein told the Sun­day Guardian re­cent­ly in War­renville.

He blamed the in­dus­try’s col­lapse on NFM’s late pay­ments to farm­ers. In 2013, Ho­sein was grant­ed a $1.6 mil­lion loan from the ADB to pur­chase a har­vester and equip­ment for his 200-acre farm in Ca­roni.

“But every­thing went down­hill in 2015 when farm­ers start­ed re­ceiv­ing un­time­ly pay­ments from NFM. In­stead of be­ing paid in 30 days, it took months for us to get our mon­ey.”

Ho­sein could not ser­vice his loan, which racked up huge in­ter­est. To sur­vive, farm­ers be­gan plant­i­ng small­er acreages, sell­ing their equip­ment, and buy­ing few­er fer­tilis­ers.

More than a decade lat­er, Ho­sein still owes ADB over $1 mil­lion.

“My loan is cur­rent­ly out of hand. This is what caused the en­tire in­dus­try to fail. The ma­jor­i­ty of farm­ers went bank­rupt,” said a frus­trat­ed Ho­sein. Farm­ers now have a con­tract with NFM and are paid every 30 days.

In a Ju­ly 2 let­ter ad­dressed to Dr Row­ley, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein, and the ADB, Ho­sein ap­pealed for their in­ter­ven­tion, stat­ing that many farm­ers have been car­ry­ing heavy fi­nan­cial bur­dens on their bal­ance sheets and ap­peal­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to step in to cor­rect the “mis­takes of the past.”

He said farm­ers are try­ing to start “with noth­ing.” Za­hir Akaloo, who start­ed grow­ing rice in the Nar­i­va Swamp in 1985 and was forced out in 1998 by en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists who thought farm­ers were de­stroy­ing the nat­ur­al habi­tat, said the Gov­ern­ment had failed rice farm­ers.

“We should have been grow­ing our rice to feed the na­tion. In­stead, we are high­ly de­pen­dent on the avail­abil­i­ty of rice on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket. When will we be­come self-suf­fi­cient?”

The Gov­ern­ment, he said, ne­glect­ed the farm­ers who could have been feed­ing the na­tion with lo­cal­ly grown rice. Akaloo said the coun­try has suf­fi­cient land to cul­ti­vate rice. Rice is grown in Ca­roni, Plum Mi­tan, Fe­lic­i­ty and El Car­men. Six months ago, Akaloo lost 90 acres of rice val­ued at $350,000 be­cause of lack of ir­ri­ga­tion.

It’s not the first time he has suf­fered loss­es. When pro­duc­tion was soar­ing, Akaloo in­vest­ed in a $3 mil­lion mill. “It can mill 3,000 pounds of rice in an hour.” It’s one of three mills the Akaloos fam­i­ly has pur­chased.

Akaloo be­gan sup­ply­ing white rice to the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme and su­per­mar­kets.

“Some­body ac­cused me of sell­ing dog rice, and I stopped the sup­ply. That was a big lie.”

The mill and a rice dry­er have been col­lect­ing dust in a ware­house in War­renville. Akaloo al­so could not com­pete with grow­ing im­ports. He al­so com­plained there was no seed bank in the coun­try. Some farm­ers ger­mi­nate their seeds or ob­tain them from NFM.

“Some­times we get high yields with the seeds ... oth­er times it’s poor. It’s a hit or miss for us.” Long-stand­ing farmer Richard Singh said he had to shift from plant­i­ng rice to short-term crops due to re­peat­ed chal­lenges and loss­es. I want to be­lieve I am prob­a­bly the stu­pid­est farmer in the world,” he said.

Singh said the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) ac­cused him twice of ex­tract­ing wa­ter from a re­strict­ed riv­er in El Car­men while cul­ti­vat­ing rice.

The first in­ci­dent took place in 2014. Singh said he was si­phon­ing wa­ter from a ravine. WASA seized Singh’s pump, and he was lat­er charged. In 2017, the case was dis­missed in court. Singh turned to cul­ti­vat­ing short-term crops to sus­tain his liveli­hood.

“My pas­sion and ex­per­tise is grow­ing rice so I took a chance and plant­ed a crop again.” Last Ju­ly, Singh said WASA ac­cused him of ex­tract­ing wa­ter from the riv­er again and con­fis­cat­ed his pump. “I showed them the pump was pulling wa­ter from a ravine.”For three weeks, Singh could not wa­ter his crop, which wilt­ed and died. “Then WASA came back to say they re­alised I wasn’t tak­ing the wa­ter from the riv­er af­ter I lost my en­tire crop val­ued at $300,000. Oh God! How much time I go lose mon­ey?”

Re­fus­ing to give up, Singh is giv­ing the in­dus­try an­oth­er try.

“I bor­rowed over $200,000 to pre­pare and plant 200 acres of rice. Ah tak­ing a big gam­ble. I don’t know what will hap­pen this time. I keep­ing meh fin­gers crossed.”

The Sun­day Guardian What­sApped a list of ques­tions to NFM’s CEO Ian Mitchell and Ho­sein re­gard­ing the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of HAFED’s mill. Mitchell said he could not speak on the mat­ter, while Ho­sein did not re­spond.