New Delhi [India], October 29 (ANI): The two-day inaugural version of Bharat International Rice Conference is aimed toward offering ‘justice’ to Indian rice farmers by serving to them achieve higher entry on the planet market, Dev Garg, Vice President, Indian Rice Exporters Federation, mentioned on Wednesday.
Mega rice conferences have been held in a number of nations, however India, a key grower and exporter, had by no means hosted an occasion of this scale, he mentioned, chatting with ANI.
‘This is for the primary time that justice is being finished, and the discourse is coming again to India. India is the most important producer of rice. India is the most important exporter of rice,’ he mentioned, a day earlier than the convention is about to kick off at Bharat Mandapam.
According to him, India exports rice to 172 nations worldwide, and controls about 40 per cent of the market share.
‘In spite of this dominance within the (rice) sector, India was not granted its due justice,’ Dev Garg added.
‘Today, I’ve been receiving the overseas delegates the entire day. More than 1,000 overseas delegates from 80 nations are right here. It’s a crowd, will not be a small crowd, but it surely’s a big crowd. There are so many farmers from throughout 20 states of India. Various farmers producing numerous GI and unique kinds of rice are right here. We are connecting the farmers to the worldwide market. This is the primary time that this chance has arisen the place we now have all stakeholders underneath one roof,’ he mentioned.
The farmer, the miller, the exporter, and the overseas purchaser all will get an opportunity to work together with one another, to conduct enterprise and to translate phrases into motion, he supplemented.
Dev Garg famous that the mega rice convention will ‘provide a novel alternative, the place our farmers can shift from promoting their crops underneath the minimal help value and we can get greater costs than the MSP costs for our farmers.’
Garg illustrated this with an instance: ‘In the case of Japanese delicacies, the rice that the Japanese delicacies makes use of is far, far more costly than what our farmers get underneath the MSP regime. However, there’s a terror within the overseas purchaser’s thoughts whether or not Indian rice shall be an appropriate substitute for Japanese delicacies.’
To bridge this notion hole, BIRC 2025 will function a Culinary Experience Centre curated with help from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). ‘We will create a Culinary Experience Zone whereby we are going to present that Indian rice is an appropriate substitute for overseas cuisines,’ Garg asserted.
More than 4 billion individuals depend upon rice for sustenance and earnings, together with roughly 150 million smallholder farmers who domesticate the crop throughout 100+ nations. Rice anchors a worldwide business valued at roughly USD 330 billion and is the third-most-traded meals commodity.
India produced round 150 million tonnes of rice in 2024-25 from almost 47 million hectares–about 28% of world output–with common yields bettering from 2.72 tonnes per hectare in 2014-15 to about 3.2 tonnes per hectare in 2024-25, owing to raised seed varieties, agronomic practices, irrigation protection, know-how adoption, and supportive insurance policies.
The occasion will goal Rs 1.80 lakh crore in new rice import markets at the moment sourced from India’s rivals, with Rs 25,000 crore value of export MoUs/contracts recognized, organisers have mentioned earlier. (ANI)