Guyana searching aggressively for new rice markets

Last Updated on Tuesday, 7 July 2026, 14:43 by Denis Chabrol

Amid low world rice prices that have forced government to continue subsidising the industry, Guyana is searching for more export markets to buy the grain whose production is set to reach 820,000 tonnes this year, Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha said Tuesday.

He said government was making efforts to secure markets in Mexico, Haiti and Cuba, in addition to selling more to Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states such as Jamaica and St Lucia. “They are buying more rice from Guyana than any other part of the Caribbean,” he later told Demerara Waves Online News. The minister said he was in an “advanced stage” of talks with the Mexican Ambassador to Guyana, and already Guyana had dispatched a “small amount” of paddy to Haiti with the hope of an increased from the second crop of 2026. He said Guyana was continuing rice exports to Europe but the price there is lower.

Already, Guyana has produced 414,000 tonnes of rice for 2026 and he was optimistic about reaching this year’s target.

As a result of the glut in the rice market, Mr Mustapha said the state-run Guyana Rice Development Board also continues to give up the GY$650 million to GY$700 million in annual commission that millers have to pay for exports, and in turn government is taking up that revenue shortfall. He said so far for this year, government has transferred GY$430 million of GY$807 million to GRDB. “That’s the contribution alone from the millers’ commission to GRDB,” he told the distribution of the farmers price subsidy of GY$300 per bag of paddy at Leonora national track and field facility, West Coast Demerara.  The support also entails government providing one bag of fertiliser per acre cultivated  plus GY$300 per bag of paddy sold by farmers to millers. Demerara Waves Online News was told that millers were now paying farmers GY$2,500 per bag of paddy, down from GY$4,000 per bad in 2023, due largely to higher global rice outputs by big producers such as India, Indonesia and Malaysia.

In Region Three (West Demerara-Essequibo Islands), 560 farmers, who cultivated 15,636 acres of land in the last rice crop, would receive GY$401,696,055. Government said the total cost of the paddy price support is GY$2.763 billion. The payment formula is GY$15,000 for farmers who cultivated 50 and less acres, while those planting 50 and more acres would receive GY$10,000.

Land rent
The Agriculture Minister appealed to private landowners to cease charging farmers exorbitant rents. He said although the Mahaica-Mahaicony Abary Agricultural Development Authority (MMA/ADA) was charging GY$3,500 for land rental and drainage and irrigation services and the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission was charging approximately GY$1,000 or less per acre, farmers were renting their land at “exorbitant prices” of as much as GY$30,000. Mr Mustapha appealed to landowners to desist from doing so in an effort to reduce the cost of production.

On the infrastructure side, he said Region Three now had seven new pumps, government was pushing ahead with plans to build a big drainage canal, similar to the one at Hope, East Coast Demerara and providing good farm-to-market roads.

Other areas of support that government is offering are drone spraying of fertiliser and integration of paddy cultivation with livestock and high-yielding crops. “We don’t want to see you only depend on rice,” he said.

Though rice production has grown from 550,000 tonnes in 2020 to 825,000 tonnes in 2025 at a time of a slump in international prices, the Agriculture Minister said no paddy or rice was being dumped. “No, no, no! Not at all. We bought the paddy. For example, some of the paddy that we bought is still being stored at Essequibo. We’ll mill that paddy and deal with the rice,” Mr Mustapha said. He said government was building a storage and facility in Onderneeming, Essequibo, in addition to similar privately-owned facilities.

More than a year ago, rice farmers on the Essequibo Coast had resorted to dumping paddy.