Several residents of Windsor Castle, Essequibo Coast are blaming a rice farmer for what they call thousands of dollars in losses after chemical residues from a nearby rice field filtered onto their crops on Thursday last.
According to the affected cash crop framers, a rice farmer last Thursday morning sprayed his rice field with the herbicide Gramoxone, as he prepared it for rice cultivation.
The use of the herbicide is common to kill unwanted grass but instead of using a fogging machine to spray his rice field, the farmer reportedly used a tractor with a mounted sprayer and in the process of spraying his rice land which is located east of the village, the farmer may have contaminated a part of the community with the harmful chemical.
