Small rice farmers pumped $28B into economy last year – Ramsammy

Dr Leslie Ramsammy

Agriculture Minister, Dr Leslie Ramsammy yesterday denied drug lords were the major investors in Guyana’s development and instead said that small scale rice farmers were actually the largest investors domestically.

Dr Ramsammy said that in operational costs alone rice farmers spent $28 billion last year, “not in in-kind contributions, not in their investments in machines, but in operational costs, in real money, directly for cultivation. This is money they invested in land preparations, in fertilizers and pesticides, in seed paddy, in water management in their fields, in harvesting, in transportation of their paddies.”

He said that rice farmers also spent $6 billion in tractors and harvesters, adding that in