Under the project ‘Establishing and networking of market intelligence centres in India’ scientists of Agricultural Economics department of College of Agriculture of GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology (GBPUAT) have forecast that in this harvesting season farmers will get Rs 1800 to 2000 per quintal for their paddy from October to December 2013.
This National Agriculture Innovation project of Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi is sponsored by the World Bank. One of the objectives of this project is to make price forecasts well in advance of sowing of selected agricultural commodities and during harvesting. The research team at Pantnagar had conducted market survey of Rudrapur regulated market, a major market for fine paddy in Uttarakhand, and analysed market price data for last 18 years.
The results of econometric analysis showed that the market prices of fine paddy (Pusa 1121, Panjab-1 and Sarbati etc.) in Rudrapur market would be in the range of Rs 1800-2000 per quintal in October, November and December 2013. Farmers have been advised by the experts to sell their fine paddy after harvest, since there is limited scope for increase in prices in next three months.
The major paddy producing countries in the world are China, India, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, and Bangladesh. India has the largest area under paddy in the world and ranks second in production after China. India ranks among the first top five exporters of rice and exports about 7-8 lakh tonnes paddy mostly to Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries, Europe, and USA.
Indian produces about 20-24 per cent of global rice production. The area under paddy in India was 42.50 million hectares and production was around 152.60 million tonnes during 2012. West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Orissa, Assam, Karnataka and Haryana are the major paddy-producing states in India. As far as Uttarakhand is concerned, area under paddy was 0.29 million hectares and production was 0.55 million tonnes during 2011-12.
The major paddy-producing districts in Uttarakhand are Udham Singh Nagar, Dehradun and Haridwar.
