Odisha has earned the distinction of being the 4th largest rice supplier paddy to the central pool. Against the procurement, the State’s requirement for different schemes comes to around 30 lakh million tons, and the balance of 22 lakh million tons is delivered to the central pool of the union government, said a senior official on Monday.

Odisha is now procuring around 76 lakh million tons of paddy from farmers of the State which is converted to around 52 lakh million tons of custom milled rice inside the State”, Principal Secretary Food Security and Consumer Welfare Sri Vir Vikram Yadav in an interactive session with a high-level study mission from Nepal.

The successful implementation of food security provisions in the State has drawn notes of appreciation from high-level study missions from Nepal.

This high-level study team from the neighbouring country visited Odisha to know about the innovative approaches and methods adopted by the State in ensuring food security for the poor and vulnerable.

“State is implementing a national food security scheme, state food security programme, social security measures for the old, differently able and destitute. Recently the public distribution system (PDS) has been transformed to a higher level with the adoption of technology, ground trotting of databases, data sanitization, and dynamic data monitoring on a real-time basis”, Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra said on the occasion.

“Nobody will stay in hunger” is the motto of our Government and Governance in Odisha. All concerned departments like food security and consumer welfare, women and child development, agriculture and farmers’ empowerment, scheduled tribe and scheduled caste development, social security and empowerment of persons with disability, water resources, Panchayati raj and drinking water, housing and urban development work at tandem for materializing this motto on a sustainable basis, said Mahapatra in an interactive session with the Nepalese delegation.

The High-level Study Mission from Nepal consisted of 10 members under the leadership of Dil Bahadur Gurung, a Member National Planning Commission of Nepal. Senior officers from different Ministries associated with agriculture and food security in the Government of Nepal joined the team. The team is scheduled to have field-level visits to different GPs, food dispensing by a grain ATM, and operation of Women Self Help Groups in Public Distribution System.