Southern states approach Telangana for rice supplies

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Telangana, which has emerged as a rice granary for the past few years, is receiving inquiries for it rice supplies from its southern neighbors – Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The newly formed Congress government in Karnataka approached the Government of Telangana, to supply them with more than 2,000 tons of rice. It needs rice for the ‘Ana Bhagya’ plan which was promised by the last assembly elections.

Telangana Agriculture Minister Singiriddi Niranjan Reddy told a select group of reporters at a meeting of farm producer organizations that Karnataka has approached the state and “it is under consideration by the government”.

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A state government source pegged Karnataka’s monthly requirement for the scheme at 2 lakh tons.

The Government of Tamil Nadu also approached the Government of Telangana, seeking the supply of three lakh tons. She said she was ready to take parboiled rice from the state.

Boom in rice production

Rice production in the state quadrupled to 26 Mt (16 Mt) in 2022-23, from 6.8 Mt (40 Mt of rice) in 2014-15, when the state was carved out from Andhra Pradesh.

During this period, the area planted with rice quadrupled to 12.1 million acres (4.9 million ha; fall and spring seasons total) from 1.4 million ha.

In the spring season that just ended, the country bought 6.6 million tons of rice from farmers.

Buy more boiled

Meanwhile, the state continues to have problems with parboiled rice, forcing it to move closer to the centre. On Saturday, Telangana Industry Minister KT Rama Rao met Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal and urged him to buy at least 20,000 tonnes of parboiled rice from the state.

“We planted rice on an area of ​​2.3 million hectares in the spring season, which represents 50 percent of the country’s rice area in this season,” he said.

He told the Union Minister that the rice planted in the spring season is not conducive to milling to deliver raw rice, within the stipulated broken rice limit of less than 25 percent.

The center explained earlier that it would not be able to buy boiled rice from the state, citing huge stage inventories and a cold response from consumers. But she confirmed that she would buy raw rice.

Telangana said the state would have to face a heavy financial burden if the center insisted on raising only raw rice. “I have agreed to buy 10,000 tons of parboiled rice (which is about 15,000 tons of rice). This would leave us with 51,000 tons of rice (or 34,000 tons of rice) to mill to produce raw rice (which will be Hand it over to the Food Corporation of India).

financial implications

Pegging the cost of delivering one tonne of raw rice to ₹42 crore, he said it would cost ₹1,441 crore to deliver the remaining 34 lakhs of raw rice.