Santo Domingo — After the Dominican Government announced eight measures to address the rice situation in the Dominican Republic following the elimination of previously established import tariffs, rice farmers said the Government offered no concrete solutions to the sector’s crisis.
Rice farmers met with a Government delegation led by Vice President Raquel Peña and the Administrative Minister of the Presidency, Andrés Bautista.
“We are going to the fields today without any solution to what we have denounced as national rice production,” said Marcos Rodríguez, president of the National Federation of Rice Producers, after learning of the announced measures.
Rodríguez stated that national rice production is in a weak position, as the discussion centers on whether or not it is competitive, because ” the free market of the United States means that it will take away the national rice production of 30,000 producers, 300,000 direct and indirect jobs, and the guarantee that rice has provided for food security in the country.”
“Today we leave very worried, because the measures don’t fill the void for us to be competitive. I understand that the Government must look for a solution, perhaps through renegotiation or to level the playing field, but if there is no respect and if rice is going to enter the free market, we will disappear,” said the producer.
For his part, Heraldo Suero, director of the Dominican Association of Rice Factories (Adofa), said everything proposed is valuable and valid, but food sovereignty is at stake.
“It is a process that involves new bilateral understandings, and that the Dominican Republic is sovereign over rice and that this cannot be negotiated,” Suero explained.
Suero sent a message to the United States urging them to understand that rice grown on Dominican soil is non-negotiable, “and that privilege we have achieved for decades of preserving national food sovereignty is not negotiable in trade agreements.”
“There is no bottom, no measure, and nothing that can overcome the asymmetry in trade, production, and productive structure with the United States,” he added.