Punjab Faces Looming Rice Storage Crisis
22-Aug-2025 08:20 PM
Chandigarh. In Punjab, the state that contributes the most food grains to the central pool, the paddy production area has increased to a peak of 32.49 lakh hectares during the current Kharif season and the weather and monsoon conditions there have also remained quite favourable for the crop.
As a result, there is a possibility of a great production of paddy in the state, due to which the crisis of its procurement and storage of rice may once again become serious. Rice millers have already announced that they will not mill hybrid variety of paddy.
The interesting fact is that the Punjab government had banned the cultivation of paddy with hybrid seeds, but the Punjab and Haryana High Court rejected the decision of the state government.
The food grain storage situation in Punjab is already complex. At present, there is a huge stock of about 146 lakh tonnes of rice and 77.86 lakh tonnes of wheat in the existing Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns / warehouses in the state. The total storage capacity of food grains in Punjab is 180 lakh tonnes.
Since a huge quantity of about 190 lakh tonnes of paddy is expected to arrive in the state's mandis during the Kharif marketing season of 2025-26, there may be tremendous difficulty in storing the huge quantity of rice received from rice millers in the coming months.
Rice millers say that milling hybrid paddy is economically disadvantageous. On milling paddy, 66 percent whole rice is obtained, but the share of whole grain in milled rice of hybrid paddy increases to 45 percent.
To meet the rules of Food Corporation of India, millers will need to buy rice at their own level. Why would the millers want to do this.
The Punjab Rice Millers Association has demanded to make public the report prepared by IIT Kharagpur last year on hybrid paddy so that the real situation can be known.
The head of the association says that four lakh tonnes of last year's paddy stock is still lying with the rice millers. Since the Food Corporation's specification allows only 25 per cent whole grains in the total stock of rice, the government should allow trials of hybrid rice.
Hybrid rice has been cultivated on a large scale in Majha, Doab and Malwa regions of Punjab this year also because its high yield rate gives more profit to the farmers, but a new crisis may arise due to the rice millers' refusal to mill this hybrid rice.