MADURAI: Though farmers are interested in cultivating traditional varieties of paddy, processing it into rice and selling it remains a Himalayan hurdle for the farmers in Madurai. As there are no more than a handful of rice mill facilities that can process traditional paddy varieties, the agricultural marketing department, in view of helping the farmers, has planned to coordinate with smaller mills and equip them to process traditional paddy and sell the produce at regulated markets through the e-Nam facility.
According to officials from the agriculture marketing department, several consignments of traditional rice varieties, including Maplai Samba, Karuppu Kavuni, and Vaigai Kondan, have been arriving at the regulatory market for sales through the E-Nam facility. "Roughly more than 150 bags of processed traditional rice (73 kg per bag) have been sold through the Thirumangalam Regulatory Market in 2023 till date. Data from other regulatory markets stated that about 44.56 quintals of Pungar paddy and Karupu Kavuni paddy have been sold through Melur RM. About 13 quintals of Karupu Kavuni paddy and Thuya Malli paddy have been sold through other regulatory markets like Usilampatti," the officials said.
Though over time more farmers have shown interest in cultivating traditional varieties of paddy, they face many hardships in processing paddy into rice as there are only a handful of facilities that can process traditional paddy, the officials further said.
Earlier speaking, Gopal, a traditional paddy farmer from Melavalavu in Madurai said there are no rice mills available in Madurai for processing traditional paddy. "We had to take our paddy to facilities in Pudukkottai or Theni for processing paddy into rice. Only a handful of farmers take measures towards processing it and selling it through options, including direct sales through social media platforms. The rest of the farmers sell it as paddy. The TN government should consider establishing a traditional paddy processing centre in Madurai to help farmers," Gopal said.
While speaking, V Mercy Jeyarani, secretary of the marketing committee in the Agricultural Marketing department in Madurai said the agriculture marketing department is assisting the farmers to get profitable prices for their agriculture products at regulated markets through e-Nam. "The department has special plans to assist smaller rice mills and equip them with the needed equipment, allowing them to process traditional paddy varieties so that the farmers will be able to process traditional paddy into the rice and sell them for much more profitable prices through the e-Nam facilities," she added.
Another official under the condition of anonymity stated that as far as the traditional varieties of paddy or rice are sold through the e-Nam facility, it has to be listed under other categories of rice or paddy. "Specific descriptions for each variety are not yet updated at the facility, and they are all sold under the same category of traditional varieties. Updating the facility with separate options for each traditional variety could improve the exposure to each variety in the market," the official said.