This food office is the only one in the country that is allowed to purchase Sava monsoon rice, which is counted in masino. The company does not have any rice purchasing center anywhere in West Nawalparasi and Kapilvastu districts except Bhairahawa.
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The Food Management and Trade Company Limited, Lumbini Provincial Office, Bhairahawa, targeting farmers in West Nawalparasi and Kapilvastu districts, could not complete the rice procurement work as per the target.
The target of purchasing 5,000 quintals of sava monsoon paddy from Bhairahawa for this year was set at 5,000 quintals, but only half of the quantity has been purchased. Since farmers in these districts grow a large amount of sava monsoon paddy, the company had planned to purchase only sava monsoon paddy from the Bhairahawa office this year.
This food office is the only one in the country that has been allowed to purchase sava monsoon paddy measured in meters. The company has not set up a rice procurement center anywhere in West Nawalparasi and Kapilvastu districts except Bhairahawa.
Although the support price for purchasing rice was set at a higher price than the market price, the office was unable to meet the target as farmers came to sell rice in small numbers. According to the company's Bhairahawa office, the primary procurement committee had fixed the price of Rs 3,600.33 per quintal and started the paddy procurement program from Mangsir 5. When the committee fixed this price, the purchase price of monsoon paddy in the external market was only Rs 3,500 per quintal.
Basanta Raj Adhikari, Information Officer and Quality Control Officer of the company's provincial office, Bhairahawa, said that only 2,050 quintals of Sava monsoon paddy were purchased this year and the paddy procurement program was stopped from last Magh 23.
According to him, paddy was purchased from 22 farmers from Rupandehi and surrounding areas who came to sell paddy. After some time, the company fixed the purchase price in the market, and the farmers started going to the traders for sale.
Since the traders were not obliged to maintain the quality of paddy to purchase, it was easier to sell to the farmers.
The company, however, had returned the paddy of some farmers as it did not meet the prescribed quality standards. ‘We had set a price slightly higher than the market price to purchase target-quality rice and publicized it to the farmers,’ the official said. ‘No quality rice that met the criteria set for purchasing target-quality rice came to the office.’
The company did not purchase rice with a lot of chaff, mixed with other rice, with excessive moisture in the rice, and with damaged grains. Kul Prasad Neupane, the operator of Muktinath Food Industry in Udyogpuri, Bhairahawa, and former president of the Siddhartha Chamber of Commerce and Industry, says that food companies purchase rice only based on quality standards, but in the market, even if there is some deficiency in quality, farmers and rice traders go to entrepreneurs rather than companies for sale.
‘We also purchase monsoon rice with a little bit of other rice mixed in and with excessive moisture. But food companies fully comply with the quality standards,' said Neupane, 'when the company purchases based on quality, farmers and traders benefit a lot from us.'
Gulab Chandra Baniya, a farmer from Madanganj, Siyari-6, Rupandehi, says that farmers have to wait at least a month for the harvested rice to dry according to the standards of the rice purchased by the company, and waiting for a month will delay wheat cultivation.
According to him, recently 75 percent of farmers have stopped going through the hassle of harvesting, drying, and threshing rice and have started selling rice to traders from the fields. Local traders and millers buy rice from the company even if the price is slightly lower than that of the company, even if it is a mixture of sava, monsoon rice and other coarse varieties.
