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Abstract
The Guyana rice industry has experienced significant growth over the years to become
one of the largest agricultural sub-sectors in Guyana. Over the last decade the industry increased
yields from 3.5mt per ha to 5.2mt per ha thus increasing exports from 51,000 mt in 1990 to over
336,000tonnes in 2010. The recent success in the form of increased production due to expanded
acreage and increased productivity in the increase yields; have underlined the need to assess our
current processing capacity to determine whether it is sufficient to deal with the increasing
production. A survey was conducted by means of questionnaires sent to all mills and data was
extracted. The country has the ability to take in 13,945mt of paddy per day, however can only dry
13,28lmt per day. This indicates a deficiency in drying capacity, which is more pronounced in
regions 4&5 and 3There is a deficiency in storage capacity in the country especially in regions 6
and 3 where productions far exceed storage capacity. There is an absence of the capacity to store
paddy for a long term basis (more than a year), as the current system only caters for storage of 3
to 4 months. The milling capacity in the country is 256mt/hr. There is generally a lack of separate
storage for finished product, since rice is mostly milled to order and is shipped within 3-4 days.