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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Geographical indication: Battle over Basmati -Milind Ghatwai, Harish Damodaran & Divya Goyal

Geographical indication: Battle over Basmati -Milind Ghatwai, Harish Damodaran & Divya Goyal

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published Published on Aug 26, 2016   modified Modified on Aug 26, 2016
-The Indian Express

The GI tag is used to identify various kinds of goods including Darjeeling tea, Kanchipuram silk saree and Kolhapuri chappal.

When Krishnakumar Tomar, one of the first to grow basmati in this fertile belt, harvested his crop 14 years back, he had no idea where to sell it. With no local takers for the aromatic paddy, the 40-year-old from Badi, which falls in Raisen district, was told he could get a good price for it at Delhi’s Narela mandi or Kota in Rajasthan, both many hundred kilometers away.

“I wondered whether it was worth the trouble going all the way there”, recalls Tomar. The long road journey to Narela may only have further sowed seeds of doubt over his decision to switch from growing regular high-yielding paddy.

But today, “basmati is my main crop”, declares this science graduate, who grows Pusa Basmati-1 (PB-1), a variety bred by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi, on his entire 35-acres farmland. He devotes more resources and attention to it than even wheat, which is cultivated during the rabi winter season and sold to government agencies at the official minimum support price (MSP).

Tomar used to previously cultivate paddy varieties such as ‘Mahamaya’ and ‘Kranti’, which gave yields of up to 30 quintals per acre. PB-1 yields are lower at 18-22 per acre. The difference, however, is in prices.

“Ten years ago, ordinary paddy sold at Rs 600 per quintal. Even today, the government’s MSP is only Rs 1,470. In basmati, prices rose as high as Rs 3,900 per quintal in 2013. They have fallen since to Rs 2,000, but are still more than that of non-basmati”, he points out.

Tomar is among the many farmers in this area – having assured irrigation, thanks to the Barna Dam completed in the late 1970s – who have stopped planting regular paddy or soyabean in the kharif season. They have prospered by switching to a crop that is now a bone of contention between Madhya Pradesh (MP) and the northern states led by Punjab and Haryana.

All the three are, incidentally, ruled by the BJP either by itself or in alliance.

At the heart of the dispute is MP staking claim for inclusion of 13 of its districts – from Morena, Bhind, Sheopur, Gwalior, Datia, Shivpuri and Guna in the north to Vidisha, Raisen, Sehore, Hoshangabad, Narsinghpur and Jabalpur in the central-south – in the Geographical Indication (GI) area officially demarcated for basmati cultivation.

Please click here to read more.

The Indian Express, 25 August, 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/basmati-rice-gi-tag-battle-madhaya-pradesh-punjab-export-price-agriculture-2994967/


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