Dear Editor,
The sowing of the present rice crop has commenced in Region Two, and the exercise is moving apace in all parts of the Essequibo Coast. 35,500 acres is expected to be sown as all the lands are irrigated from the main canal and rainfall. A bumper crop is also expected with an average of some 50 bags per acre. Within the next 3 weeks the farmers will need to apply their first fertilizer dose of TSP and urea. The coalition government and the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Noel Holder, should make sure that enough fertilizers are in the system for three doses at a subsidized cost. In the past these fertilizers were subsidized, but this never filtered down to the small farmers and they were stored in the wrong areas of the coast, thus causing hardship for the poor farmers.
The new government and the Minister of Agriculture must make sure that these fertilizers are stored at Aurora, Suddie, Anna Regina and Better Success. These places will allow easier access for rice farmers from different areas of the coast, and the transportation costs will be lower as the fertilizers will not be centralized in one place. I suggest that the fertilizers be placed in the hands of the GRDB and the Essequibo Paddy Producers’ Association, with strict accountability required. In the past in the case of some of the outlying locations which were identified by the Guyana Rice Development Board, farmers chose to buy their fertilizers from wholesale dealers and big businessmen at a lower cost with free transportation to their homes.
The Minister of Agriculture should also subsidise the insecticides and pesticides required by the rice industry, which would help to increase the rice farmers’ income considerably. Guyoil which is a state owned entity, can play a crucial role in keeping the fuel price down for combines and tractors. There should be regular monitoring of the irrigation regulators on the embankment to avoid tampering and vandalism. The Tapakuma Irrigation Scheme was designed to be the last place to access irrigation water for rice cultivation, since the main canal was built to send low-level water into the lower rice lands areas which can be flooded without much difficulty.
The higher lands which stretch from Coffee Grove to Reliance, should be the first to be irrigated when the main canal water level is high, so these lands can get gravity feed easily and there would be less wastage of the main canal water. The remaining water in the main canal can then be released in the downstream areas and the three door sluice at Red Lock can lock down and store the remaining water for the rest of the rice crop.
Water management is very important in this region, and because of poor water management under the past administration , farmers sometimes lose their entire crop or have to resort to the pumping of water into their fields by mechanical pumps, which is an additional cost.
I would advise that the Minister of Agriculture take a tour throughout this rice-growing region and have a first-hand look to see how the Tapakuma Irrigation Scheme was designed to service the rice farmers in Region Two. The main source of water comes from Dawa pumping station where two large Blackstone pumps were bought from the UK and were installed to pump water from the Pomeroon River in the event of dry spell or a drought.
For decades these two pumps were out of order because of inadequate maintenance and a shortage of spare parts, or the failure to correct some minor faults. They were replaced by a small caterpillar pump which is idle or inefficiently utilized. This pump for the past few years has been producing water well below capacity to flood the Tapakuma Lake and raise the level in the main conservancy canal to feed the rice fields throughout the region in dry spells.
The Minister should make a special point of visiting this pumping station with a highly qualified mechanical engineer and look at the Blackstone pumps. They should repair them, and show the PPP that the things they failed to do in the past 23 years for the rice farmers of this region, the coalition government has done within its first five-year term. Then we can say one term deserves many more.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
