Rice farmers of Volivoli, Ra no longer need to travel to Tavua Town to mill their rice for their consumption.

According to Dinesh Kumar Lal, President of Volivoli Rice Farmers Cluster their farmers faced a lot of difficulties when it was time to mill their harvested rice as there wasn't any mill they could access close to their vicinity.

This however, will now be a thing of the past following the handing over of a portable rice mill to the Volivoli Rice Farmers Cluster by Minister for Agriculture Hon. Dr Mahendra Reddy yesterday.

"Thank you to the Ministry for the timely response. Our farmers, over these past 10 years have been milling our rice in Tavua Town which is more than 40 kilometers away," said Mr. Kumar.

"We used to mill our rice close by here at Bima's mill but after they closed down, we had no other option but to travel to Tavua and mill our rice there. This is a very huge assistance to our farmers, a relief for our rice farmers because we now can just mill our own rice right here in Volivoli," shared Mr. Kumar.

"We will now try our best to form a cooperative and work again to buy our own rice harvester, this rice mill is a start for us," he said. 

Minister Reddy said that this was the primary objective of the Ministry in securing support for the rice industry as efforts were undergoing to revitalize the rice industry and achieve improved self-sufficient status, part of which was identifying binding constraints and addressing them, principal among them being rice milling.

"The distribution of this portable rice mill should address the issue of a lack of milling facilities available to the farmers here and directly resolves transportation costs borne by the farmer during rice milling. 

“During the last two years when we were promoting rice, we noticed that farmers who were growing rice for their consumption or growing rice but wanted to keep some for their consumption, for them, milling was an issue, where would they mill the rice,” he said.

“Now you don't have to worry out milling again, this portable rice mill is specifically for your cluster group, if another neighbouring rice farmers group wants to have their own rice mill, we will supply it to them," said Minister Reddy.

There are 18 farmers who are part of the Volivoli Rice Farmers Cluster who should benefit from this portable rice mill.

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