Odisha rice millers seek quality paddy

Odisha's rice millers Monday urged the state government to ensure that paddy conforming to fair average quality standard should be supplied to them for milling.

All Odisha Rice Millers Association (AORMA) secretary Santosh Agrawal said the millers are getting an average rice yield of 64-65 percent against a stipulated 68 percent after milling one quintal of the parboiled common variety paddy.

As a result, the millers are incurring heavy losses, Agrawal told IANS.

The state government has been procuring paddy from the farmers through primary agricultural cooperative societies and forcing the millers to lift the stocks from the yards of regulated marketing committees even though large chunks of such paddy do not conform to the fair average quality, he said.

The government is paying a hefty sum of Rs.32 to the primary agriculture cooperative society per quintal of paddy for just getting involved in it, he said.

Similarly, the regulated marketing committees are charging two percent market fee on the cost of paddy without providing any infrastructure to facilitate the farmers for smooth procurement, he alleged.

Although, they are duty bound to ensure supply of fair average quality of paddy, they are not doing it, he said.

Delivery of fair average quality (FAQ) paddy is never ensured resulting in shortage of rice due to lower rice out-turn recovery. Proper cleaning of paddy never takes place and societies remain a mute spectator, he said.

The government should store the paddy on its own and supply to the millers, especially those stocks that conform to FAQ instead of asking them to lift them from the yards, he said.

The millers also urged the government to revise the custom milling rates of parboiled and raw rice in the state.

"Although minimum support prices of paddy are being increased from time-to-time and the infrastructure cost has gone up, the custom milling rates have remained the same for the last ten years," he said.

This has made the milling less remunerative for us, he added. The government has been paying the millers Rs.20 and Rs.10 for custom milling of per quintal of parboiled and raw rice respectively, he said.

"We want revision of this rates to Rs.40 and Rs.25 respectively," he said.

Agrawal said the millers association held its general body meeting in Bargarh town, about 380 km from Bhubaneswar, Saturday.

Thirty millers who attended the meeting unanimously decided to limit their role to only paddy milling and delivery of milled rice after periodically lifting FAQ paddy from storage godowns of the cooperative societies instead of direct lifting from the market yards, he said.

On an average the state produces seven million tonnes of paddy every year and procures 4.5 million tonnes from farmers for custom milling to produce three million tonnes of rice, Agrawal said.