Nellore: Paddy growers are at the mercy of rice millers in disposing the paddy being harvested in a big way in Nellore district. Though the government has set up paddy procurement centres, they can procure only if the miller is ready to accept the paddy. Because of the ongoing harvesting everywhere and the output, more than 30 metric tones of paddy has been arriving into the market on a daily basis but the mills are not in a position to handle the volume.
In this backdrop, farmers are seen drying the rice wherever they find place including road margins. Quite often, it has been taking a long time, sometimes days, for vehicles carrying paddy to the rice mills to be unload. Unlike in the past, the number of rice millers entitled to collect the paddy is fewer this year because of a condition of the government to submit bank guarantee to the extent of '1 crore or depending on their off-take.
A rice miller said they are forced to spend heavily towards bank charges for processing bank guarantees unlike in the past. He said he paid Rs 1,73,000 towards processing fee to obtain bank guarantee for Rs 49,50,000. In this backdrop, farmers have been requesting authorities to tag the purchase centres with the rice mills located close to them and also demanding the government to buy the paddy directly from farmers to prevent middlemen from exploiting them. Interestingly, rice millers have also appealed to the government to buy paddy directly and give it to the millers for custom milling instead of bringing pressure on them to buy now citing moisture and other problems.
A farmer, Chandrasekhar Reddy, has alleged that millers are reducing the price under the pretext of moisture, brokens and abdomen white on the grains though the paddy is within the parameters fixed by the Food Corporation of India. State Secretary of Farmers Association Federation Ch. Koti Reddy has underlined the need to upgrade the software at the paddy procurement centres to accept 100 bags of paddy instead of 80 bags per acre. He too appealed to the government to buy paddy from farmers instead of involving millers at this stage.
