President David Granger’s address in July to a rice forum at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre appeared designed to lift spirits in a sector that has had to absorb the shock of Venezuela’s earlier announcement that Guyana could no longer rely on that country’s rice market under the PetroCaribe Agreement. The sector, Granger declared was going through “a challenge” rather than “in crisis” and that the country’s most successful agricultural endeavour was simply “too big to fail.” It was an attempt to talk up the rice industry which, situated as they are in the eye of the storm, rice farmers on the Essequibo coast can be forgiven for taking with a pinch of salt.
While only a single farmer openly declared that he did not share the President’s upbeat perspective on the rice industry, last Wednesday’s meeting at Reliance, convened to allow for a report on the previous Friday’s meeting
