Santo Domingo – The Dominican Republic has failed to complete critical preparations for the full liberalization of its domestic rice market as required by the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), the head of the country’s leading agricultural professional organization has cautioned.
Tito Hernández, president of the National Association of Agricultural Professionals (ANPA), made the declaration in response to a recent formal request from the United States asking Dominican authorities to roll back Decree 693-24, the current regulatory framework that governs the country’s rice import volumes. In his analysis, Hernández noted that Dominican policymakers have had nearly 20 years to upgrade and reinforce the domestic rice sector since DR-CAFTA was first implemented, ahead of the full market opening mandate coming into force. Despite this long timeline, he says the essential public and private investments needed to boost competitiveness were never prioritized.
Hernández outlined the key upgrades that should have been rolled out over the past two decades: modernizing outdated irrigation infrastructure, cutting pervasive high production costs, expanding public investment in agricultural research, developing higher-yield, more resilient crop varieties, expanding affordable access to producer financing, scaling up farm mechanization, and enacting a cohesive national policy to improve the overall competitiveness of the domestic rice sector.
The ANPA president warned that repealing the existing import regulatory decree would open small and medium Dominican rice producers to unbalanced competition from U.S. rice producers, who operate with significant advantages. U.S. rice benefits from cutting-edge agricultural technology, massive economies of scale, accessible low-cost financing, and substantial ongoing government support that allows it to be exported at far lower price points than most Dominican producers can match.
Hernández’s analysis estimates that a full, immediate market opening would impact roughly 30,000 domestic rice producers across the country, who tend more than 1.3 million acres of riceland. The sector produces approximately 14.8 million quintals of rice annually, and supports an entire economic value chain that generates more than 45 billion Dominican pesos (RD$) in annual economic activity. Disruptions to the domestic sector would ripple through every link of this chain, he argued.
A sudden surge of cheaper imported rice would drive down the market prices that Dominican farmers can command for their harvest, Hernández warned, leading to gluts of unsold domestic rice, rising default rates on producer debt, and widespread reductions in planted riceland as farmers are forced out of the industry. These shocks would also extend beyond farm operations, hurting domestic rice mills, input suppliers, transportation companies and other small businesses tied to the local rice economy.
While Hernández acknowledged that increased rice imports could theoretically put downward pressure on retail prices for consumers, he emphasized that there is no guarantee that lower import costs would be passed through fully or permanently to shoppers. Multiple intermediate costs – including storage, processing, transportation, distribution, and retail marketing – make up the final retail price, meaning any savings from cheaper imports may only be captured by middlemen rather than consumers.
Longer-term, Hernández cautioned that eroding the competitiveness of domestic rice production would increase the Dominican Republic’s reliance on foreign rice imports, leaving the country’s food security far more vulnerable to external shocks. These risks include volatile swings in global commodity prices, widespread supply chain disruptions like those seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflicts that disrupt global grain trade, and climate-related weather events that disrupt global production.
To avoid these negative outcomes, Hernández is calling on the Dominican government to reject rushed decisions to comply with the U.S. request. He has proposed convening a national multi-stakeholder rice roundtable, bringing together federal government officials, domestic rice producers, agricultural professional associations, rice mill operators, public and private universities, agricultural research centers, and the Dominican Agricultural Bank to develop a coordinated plan.
Hernández also put forward a series of concrete policy recommendations. First, he called for an independent, comprehensive impact assessment to evaluate the potential economic, social, and food security consequences of full immediate market opening. Second, he urged the Dominican government to negotiate with U.S. trade representatives to secure an extended transition period for the market opening, alongside formal safeguard measures to support producers who face unexpected disruption. Finally, he recommended the establishment of a permanent National Rice Competitiveness Program, with a specific focus on cutting production costs, modernizing irrigation infrastructure, expanding agricultural research, boosting farm productivity, and expanding access to affordable financing and agricultural insurance for small and medium producers.
In closing his remarks, Hernández clarified that ANPA is not opposed to trade integration or compliance with the Dominican Republic’s binding international trade agreements. “We are not against trade or compliance with international agreements. We are against sacrificing Dominican producers to pay the consequences of twenty years of lack of preparation,” he stated.