Every year, for the past 11 years, the Berbice rice giants Nand Persaud and Company put in an appearance at the Berbice Expo. Mohindra Persaud, the General Manager of what is almost certainly Berbice’s most diversified private sector entity has come to feel a sense of commitment to the Berbice Expo. There may have been times when the company might have contemplated skipping the event, but Persaud says the pressure of what is perhaps best described as public expectation, takes them there.
This year the company’s booth at the event, one of the largest, boasted the customary items: various varieties of rice, tractors, tyres, fertilizer and spare parts. However, the company’s most conspicuous exhibit was a video display advertising ‘aerial spraying,’ a collaborative initiative with Air Services Ltd, one of the country’s largest aviation service providers, to treat rice fields from the air. Up until now, the treatment of rice fields has been done manually, deploying men with spray cans to apply the chemicals. It costs around $4,500 per day to apply the chemicals manually and some farmers have told Stabroek Business that not all of the field hands can be relied on to do the job thoroughly.
Two months ago Nand Persaud and Company commenced the service. The cost of applying pesticide is
