Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan urged the Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution Piyush Goyal to initiate measures for procurement of parboiled rice from Odisha.
In his letter, Pradhan said that Odisha is the fourth-largest paddy producing state. Due to bumper harvest, it is estimated that 79 LMT rice will be collected in Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2023-24 in Odisha.
In the initial allocation target, the Government of India has allocated a target of procuring 44.28 LMT of rice. Besides meeting state’s own rice requirement for NFSA and SFSA and other welfare schemes, adequate parboiled rice would be left in excess which needs to be evacuated by the Food Corporation of India (FCI).
“I request you to issue instructions to FCI to procure 10 LMT of parboiled rice from Odisha in KMS 2023-24 in addition to augmentation of procurement targets, which will significantly help secure the livelihood of lakhs of farmers of the state whose main source of earning has been through MSP operations of paddy procurement,”Pradhan wrote in his letter.