KARIMNAGAR: The fate of farmers who had brought their Kharif paddy to procurement centres over two weeks ago hangs in the balance as rice millers continue to refuse their crop. Ellala Rajashekar, a farmer from Itkyala village in Jagtial district, had filled his gunny bags with 42.5 kg of paddy each and had unloaded them at an IKP centre about 15 days ago. As he returned home, he received a phone call from the IKP centre, stating that rice millers weren’t accepting his produce as there’s excess paddy in his bags.
Ordinarily, a bag can have 40 kg of paddy in it. But farmers usually stuff another 2 kg of paddy, citing moisture content and dust, so they can sell their produce off quickly. Another farmer named Ganga Reddy said that if the millers force them to remove 2 kg of paddy from every bag, they will face heavy losses.
Upset over the developments, farmers have begun recording the voices of millers as they verbally reject their paddy and are circulating it across social media platforms, in hopes of government intervention. They want the State to help them sell their existing Kharif produce and give them directions on what to cultivate in the Rabi season.
We are not at fault, claims rice millers
Rice millers, meanwhile, claim that they’re ready to accept paddy from farmers but there’s not enough space to store them. “If the Food Corporation of India (FCI) lifts custom milled rice from our mills, we will have enough space to stock the paddy procured from the farmers,” said Rice Millers’ Association State joint secretary Boinpalli Narsing Rao.
“This is a technical issue. Farmers should understand our concerns too. The government should take necessary action to resolve this issue. We are unnecessarily being blamed,” he said. In the erstwhile Karimnagar district, there are 700 rice mills that work with parboiled and raw rice. It is, in fact, the second-highest rice mill zone in Telangana after Nalgonda district.