{"id":38019,"date":"2025-09-26T00:34:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T00:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/38019\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T00:34:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T00:34:06","slug":"scale-back-rice-production-due-to-global-price-slump-winston-jordan-demerara-waves-online-news-guyana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/38019\/","title":{"rendered":"Scale back rice production due to global price slump \u2013 Winston Jordan \u2013 Demerara Waves Online News- Guyana"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Updated on Thursday, 25 September 2025, 18:29 by Writer<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mr Winston Jordan<\/p>\n

Even as the Guyana government grapples with finding a solution to steadily falling global rice prices that are affecting farmers and millers, economist Winston Jordan is recommending reduced production of the grain.<\/p>\n

He said the bigger rice producers should remain in the business, while the smaller ones should be encouraged to diversify into other productive activities. Mr Jordan reasoned that in a period of depressed prices, there was no justifiable reason to increase rice output, expected to be around 800,000 metric tonnes this year. \u201cIt\u2019s an occasion for you to temper production for the time being unless, of course, you\u2019re in Brazil or United States or Australia or Thailand where you have massive silos where you can take off these increase in production and hold for a better time and\/or you have a domestic production that adds value to this rice,\u201d said Mr Jordan, a former finance minister and former budget director on the Facebook podcast The Countdown<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said it would not be feasible to ask farmers to produce yet another \u201cbumper crop\u201d because of inadequate storage capacity in the private sector while government spends another year to install its own silos to buy and store paddy, reminiscent of the Guyana Rice Development Board\u2019s operations several decades ago. \u201cI think we\u2019re just trial by error long after when we should have been able to gain the necessary experience to be able to plan and plan effectively,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

President Irfaan Ali earlier this month ruled out a slash in rice production, instead saying that the Guyana government would be investing in storage facilities and encouraging a move towards value-added rice products.<\/p>\n

Mr Jordan also urged the Guyana government to provide global market information concerning volume and prices for the grain so that they could make the right decisions. \u201cThe farmers have to be given information that there is a glut in the world market,\u201d he said. In the absence of adequate rice storage and value-added rice products, he said increasing rice production would always put the government on \u201cthe back foot\u201d.<\/p>\n

If the slump in rice prices is temporary, he said the grain could be stored in silos but farmers should be told if the forecast shows that the prices would remain low in the long term. \u201cIt can\u2019t be right for you to be telling farmers to go and increase production and when they do that, they\u2019re not aware of market conditions internationally,\u201d he added. Against that background, he recommended that \u201cmarginal farmers\u201d exit rice and receive government support in another crop while assisting the bigger producers. \u201cThe productive farmers, you work with them to improve their productivity even more but the ones, who are marginal farmers and so on, you have to let them know what is happening and assist them into new productive ventures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He acknowledged that the Guyana government has \u201cdone everything\u201d for rice farmers so far including supplying free fertiliser, removing duties on machinery and equipment, abolishing the Guyana Rice Development Board\u2019s commission, providing cash subsidies to offset the low price, subsidising of crop insurance premiums, and minimally enforcing income and corporation tax collections.<\/p>\n

The former finance minister said he would not support any future price subsidies on rice on top of sugar industry subsidies. \u201cThere aren\u2019t much more left that you can give to the farmers, except if you increase the price subsidy. This has nothing really to do with the farmer but this is a total misuse of taxpayers\u2019 money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The ruling People\u2019s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) attracts a sizeable chunk of its political support from the rice and sugar sector.<\/p>\n

The Ministry of Agriculture on Wednesday said farmers were continuing to \u201cseek government\u2019s intervention to secure higher prices for their paddy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mr Zulfikar Mustapha<\/p>\n

Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha was quoted as saying in a government statement that it was in the best interest of the sector for farmers to benefit from best prices and that the government was actively working to reduce the cost of production. He said approximately GY$2 billion was expended to procure fertilizer for farmers for 2025. Millers reportedly told Mr Mustapha that global markets were becoming fewer and more competitive with large producers like India having huge quantities of rice on the market.<\/p>\n

The agriculture ministry reported in its statement that a number of millers said that they were losing given the current world market prices because of their cost of production.<\/p>\n

While offers were made for the GRDB to work with millers to assess the cost of production, the ministry said a number of the millers maintained that the cost of production cannot be the determining factor for setting the price farmers receive for paddy.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne miller also said while one price is set in a contract, those prices change based on the current market price at the time the rice is sold and in order to maintain that market, those prices have to be accepted,\u201d the ministry added.<\/p>\n

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Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last Updated on Thursday, 25 September 2025, 18:29 by Writer Mr Winston Jordan Even as the Guyana government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":["post-38019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}