CHANDIGARH: Despite paddy being sown in the state in an area of 32.49 lakh hectares -the highest area under cultivation in the past couple of decades- Punjab is likely to face paddy procurement crisis during this kharif marketing season, like last year.The reason: rice millers have declared that they will not mill the hybrid varieties of paddy.Only on Monday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had quashed the state government’s blanket ban on hybrid varieties.Punjab Rice Industry Association (PRIA) Vice President Ranjit Singh Jossan told TNIE that the farmers would be hit as rice millers will not mill the hybrid varieties. “Why should we suffer? The outturn ratio of paddy is 66 per cent but the broken rice in hybrid varieties is 43 to 45 per cent. So, millers have to buy rice from the market at their own cost and give the 66 per cent milled rice to the government,” he said.Further Ranjit Singh Jossan added that last year his association PRIA, with the backing of the Punjab government, asked the Centre to physically test hybrid paddy at IIT Kharagpur. The IIT teams processed the samples at three rice mills and prepared reports. But despite repeated requests, the reports were not made public.”Now, with a crisis looming, we demand that the reports be released and the Central government compensate the industry for the losses caused by hybrid seed varieties,” he demanded.Punjab Rice Industry Association President Bharat Bhusan Binta affirmed that there should be a trial of the hybrid variety as the specification of Food Corporation of India (FCI) is 25 per cent broken rice.”Till date, approximately four lakh tonnes of paddy is still lying with the millers in their facilities,” Binta noted.Sources in the state food civil supply department said that as on Tuesday, 146 Lakh Metric Tonnes (LMT) of rice lie in the godowns of Food Corporation of India (FCI) across the state. This is not including the wheat. Together they will come to 179 LMT of rice and wheat. But the total storage capacity of godowns is 180 LMT. With around 190 lakh metric tonnes (LMT) of paddy expected to arrive in the mandis this season, once again there might be revived tensions over procurement, storage and financial viability for the state’s rice industry.Last year, after a a month long standoff between farmers, the government and the rice industry, the millers had agreed to mill the hybrid paddy varieties after imposing cuts on the price paid to farmers cultivating these varieties. The millers welcomed the decision to mill the hybrid paddy varieties by imposing cuts to compensate for the spoilage rates of 45 to 50 per cent.
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