Guyana’s agri­cul­ture sec­tor, specif­i­cal­ly the rice in­dus­try con­tin­ues to reap suc­cess de­spite the El Ni­no weath­er con­di­tion that is cur­rent­ly af­fect­ing the coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Zul­fikar Mustapha, the coun­try has ac­tu­al­ly seen an in­crease in its pro­duc­tion since the start of the year.

“Rice re­mains one of the main ac­tiv­i­ties for us. De­spite the El Ni­no con­di­tion that we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing now and most of the year, we are still able to achieve our tar­get that was set and even sur­pass it,” he said dur­ing an event at the Guyana Rice De­vel­op­ment Board (GRDB), ear­li­er this week.

The agri­cul­ture min­is­ter said the sur­plus is due to the re­newed in­ter­est and cut­ting-edge mea­sures that the GRDB has since put in place to im­prove the in­dus­try and in­crease its yield.

One of those mea­sures in­cludes the re­cent launch of a new bio-for­ti­fied rice va­ri­ety which is en­riched with zinc.

Guyana is the first coun­try in the Caribbean to have ac­cess to this new va­ri­ety.

Pri­or to the launch, the agri­cul­ture min­istry start­ed the tri­al in Re­gions Three and Six.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, this type of rice when cul­ti­vat­ed, will help farm­ers to in­crease their yield and will in­crease pref­er­en­tial prices around the world.

Not­ing that Guyana has an ad­vanced rice in­dus­try com­pared to oth­er coun­tries, Min­is­ter Mustapha said the coun­try is now help­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go to re­sus­ci­tate its rice sec­tor.

“Be­cause of the plans, be­cause of the pro­grammes that we have im­ple­ment­ed, we have seen GRDB help­ing places like Trinidad and To­ba­go that re­cent­ly lost their rice in­dus­try. GRDB is help­ing that coun­try to re­sus­ci­tate its rice in­dus­try and across the Caribbean, you will see more and more re­quests com­ing to GRDB,” the agri­cul­ture min­is­ter stat­ed.

He added that sev­er­al coun­tries are com­ing on board and in­vest­ing in Guyana’s agri­cul­ture sec­tor since many op­por­tu­ni­ties are avail­able here.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, DEC. 2, CMC -

CMC/gy/kb/2023